People of a certain kind not seldom make the most serious and vital sacrifices for bare love of singularity, and a man like Rousseau was not unlikely to feel an eccentric pleasure in proving that he could find merit in a woman who to everybody else was desperate.

One who is on bad terms with the bulk of his fellows may contrive to save his self-respect and confirm his conviction that they are all in the wrong, by preserving attachment to some one to whom general opinion is hostile; the private argument being that if he is capable of this degree of virtue and friendship in an unfavourable case, how much more could he have practised it with others, if they would only have allowed him.

Whether this kind of apology was present to his mind or not, Rousseau could always refer those who charged him with black caprice, to his steady kindness towards Theresa Le Vasseur.

Her family were among the most odious of human beings, greedy, idle, and ill-humoured, while her mother had every fault that a woman could have in Rousseau's eyes, including that worst fault of setting herself up for a fine wit.

Yet he bore with them all for years, and did not break with Madame Le Vasseur until she had poisoned the mind of her daughter, and done her best by rapacity and lying to render him contemptible to all his friends.
In the course of years Theresa herself gave him unmistakable signs of a change in her affections.