Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics)
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not yet seventeen: Rousseau, who was born on 28 June 1712, was in fact fifteen when he first met Mme de Warens.
the rest of my days: see also Book 2 of the Confessions: ‘I saw Mme de Warens. This was the period of my life that decided my character’ (p. 47).
sent me away: a reference to Rousseau’s trip to Turin, where he became a Roman Catholic.
for seven of them: the Roman historian Cassius Dio (Roman History, LXIX. 19. 2) attributes this remark to Servius Sulpicius Similis, commander of the Emperor’s bodyguards from 112 to 119 during the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian, not Vespasian. Moreover, Similis was not disgraced, but simply resigned from his role, which he had taken up reluctantly; he had the remark about his life inscribed on his tombstone.
Mama: Rousseau’s affectionate name for Mme de Warens.
our refuge: a reference to Les Charmettes, near Chambéry, where Rousseau and Mme de Warens lived in 1735–6.
1 J.-J. Rousseau, Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, ed. Patrick Coleman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 270. All subsequent references will be included in the text.
2 At the end of the twelfth and final book of the Confessions, which is divided into two parts, Rousseau refers to a putative third part, which will only appear ‘if ever I summon up the strength to write it’ (p. 642). Similarly, in Books 7 and 8 he refers to the need to write a supplement to the work (pp. 316, 373).
3 Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays, trans. and ed. M. A. Screech (London: Allen Lane, 1991), p. lix.
4 Ibid. 425–6.
5 Ibid. 163.
6 Ibid. 457, 459.
7 Ibid. 933.
8 Ibid. 990–1.
9 These playing cards, which are now in the Bibliothèque publique et universitaire in Neuchâtel, are helpfully reproduced in J.-J. Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. F. S. Eigeldinger (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010), 171–225.
10 Montaigne, The Complete Essays, 909.
1 See the Introduction, above, p. xxi.