er Marshall Villars,
the husband of one of Voltaire's first idols. This took place in the
autumn of 1733, and a French column passed through Chamberi, exciting
lively interest in all minds, including Rousseau's. He now read the
newspapers for the first time, with the most eager sympathy for the
country with whose history his own name was destined to be so
permanently associated. "If this mad passion," he says, "had only been
momentary, I should not speak of it; but for no visible reason it took
such root in my heart, that when I afterwards at Paris played the stern
republican, I could not help feeling in spite of myself a secret
predilection for the very nation that I found so servile, and the
government I made bold to assail."[74] This fondness for France was
strong, constant, and invincible, and found what was in the eighteenth
century a natural complement in a corresponding dislike of England.[75]

Rousseau's health began to show signs of weakness. His breath became
asthmatic, he had palpitations, he spat blood, and suffered from a slow
feverishness from which he never afterwards became entirely free.[76]
His mind was as feverish as his body, and the morbid broodings which
active life reduces to their lowest degree in most young men, were left
to make full havoc along with the seven devils of idleness and vacuity.
An instinct which may flow from the unrecognised animal lying deep down
in us all, suggested the way of return to wholesomeness. Rousseau
prevailed upon Madame de Warens to leave the stifling streets for the
fresh fields, and to deliver herself by retreat to rural solitude from
the adventurers who made her their prey. Les Charmettes, the modest
farm-house to which they retired, still stands. The modern traveller,
with a taste for relieving an imagination strained by great historic
monuments and secular landmarks, with the sight of spots associated with
the passion and meditation of some far-shining teacher of men, may walk
a short league from where the gray slate roofs of dull Chamberi bake in
the sun, and ascending a gently mounting road, with high leafy bank on
the right throwing cool shadows over his head, and a stream on the left
making music at his feet, he sees an old red housetop lifted lonely
above the trees. The homes in which men have lived now and again lend
themselves to the beholder's subjective impression; they seemed to be
brooding in forlorn isolation like some life-wearied gray-beard over
a