At the Hospice of the Catechumens the work of his conversion was begun in such earnest as the insincerity of at least one of the parties to it might allow.

It is needless to enter into the circumstances of Rousseau's conversion to Catholicism.

The mischievous zeal for theological proselytising has led to thousands of such hollow and degrading performances, but it may safely be said that none of them was ever hollower than this.

Rousseau avows that he had been brought up in the heartiest abhorrence of the older church, and that he never lost this abhorrence.

He fully explains that he accepted the arguments with which he was not very energetically plied, simply because he could not bear the idea of returning to Geneva, and he saw no other way out of his present destitute condition.