rebelled,
remained a cruel dart in her bosom as long as she lived. We may suppose
that there was that about household life with Rousseau which might have
bred disgusts even in one as little fastidious as Theresa was. Among
other things which must have been hard to endure, we know that in
composing his works he was often weeks together without speaking a word
to her.[133] Perhaps again it would not be difficult to produce some
passages in Rousseau's letters and in the Confessions, which show traces
of that subtle contempt for women that lurks undetected in many who
would blush to avow it. Whatever the causes may have been, from
indifference she passed to something like aversion, and in the one
place where a word of complaint is wrung from him, he describes her as
rending and piercing his heart at a moment when his other miseries were
at their height. His patience at any rate was inexhaustible; now old,
worn by painful bodily infirmities, racked by diseased suspicion and the
most dreadful and tormenting of the minor forms of madness, nearly
friendless, and altogether hopeless, he yet kept unabated the old
tenderness of a quarter of a century before, and expressed it in words
of such gentleness, gravity, and self-respecting strength, as may touch
even those whom his books leave unmoved, and who view his character with
deepest distrust. "For the six-and-twenty years, dearest, that our union
has lasted, I have never sought my happiness except in yours, and have
never ceased to try to make you happy; and you saw by what I did
lately,[134] that your honour and happiness were one as dear to me as
the other. I see with pain that success does not answer my solicitude,
and that my kindness is not as sweet to you to receive, as it is sweet
to me to show. I know that the sentiments of honour and uprightness with
which you were born will never change in you; but as for those of
tenderness and attachment which were once reciprocal between us, I feel
that they now only exist on my side. Not only, dearest of all friends,
have you ceased to find pleasure in my company, but you have to tax
yourself severely even to remain a few minutes with me out of
complaisance. You are at your ease with all the world but me. I do not
speak to you of many other things. We must take our friends with their
faults, and I ought to pass over yours, as you pass over mine. If you
were happy with me I could be content, but I see clearly that you are
not, and th