The youth who had begun the day with dreams of palaces, found himself at night sleeping in a den where he paid a halfpenny for the privilege of resting in the same room with the rude woman who kept the house, her husband, her five or six children, and various other lodgers.

This rough awakening produced no consciousness of hardship in a nature which, beneath all fantastic dreams, always remained true to its first sympathy with the homely lives of the poor.

The woman of the house swore like a carter, and was always dishevelled and disorderly: this did not prevent Rousseau from recognising her kindness of heart and her staunch readiness to befriend.

He passed his days in wandering about the streets of Turin, seeing the wonders of a capital, and expecting some adventure that should raise him to unknown heights.

He went regularly to mass, watched the pomp of the court, and counted upon stirring a passion in the breast of a princess.