32 that Rousseau arrived
at Chamberi, and finally took up his residence with Madame de Warens, in
the dullest and most sombre room of a dull and sombre house. She had
procured him employment in connection with a land survey which the
government of Charles Emmanuel III. was then executing. It was only
temporary, and Rousseau's function was no loftier than that of clerk,
who had to copy and reduce arithmetical calculations. We may imagine how
little a youth fresh from nights under the summer sky would relish eight
hours a day of surly toil in a gloomy office, with a crowd of dirty and
ill-smelling fellow-workers.[68] If Rousseau was ever oppressed by any
set of circumstances, his method was invariable: he ran away from them.
So now he threw up his post, and again tried to earn a little money by
that musical instruction in which he had made so many singular and
grotesque endeavours. Even here the virtues which make ordinary life a
possible thing were not his. He was pleased at his lessons while there,
but he could not bear the idea of being bound to be there, nor the
fixing of an hour. In time this experiment for a subsistence came to the
same end as all the others. He next rushed to Besancon in search of the
musical instruction which he wished to give to others, but his baggage
was confiscated at the frontier, and he had to return.[69] Finally he
abandoned the attempt, and threw himself loyally upon the narrow
resources of Madame de Warens, whom he assisted in some singularly
indefinite way in the transaction of her very indefinite and
miscellaneous affairs,--if we are here, as so often, to give the name of
affairs to a very rapid and heedless passage along a shabby road
to ruin.

The household at this time was on a very remarkable footing. Madame de
Warens was at its head, and Claude Anet, gardener, butler, steward, was
her factotum. He was a discreet person, of severe probity and few words,
firm, thrifty, and sage. The too comprehensive principles of his
mistress admitted him to the closest intimacy, and in due time, when
Madame de Warens thought of the seductions which ensnare the feet of
youth, Rousseau was delivered from them in an equivocal way by
solicitous application of the same maxims of comprehension. "Although
Claude Anet was as young as she was, he was so mature and so grave, that
he looked upon us as two children worthy of indulgence, and we both
looked upon him as a respectable man, whose esteem it was our