epts this as decisive, and fixes the return in the
spring of 1733 [i. 12]. My own conjectural chronology is this: Returns
from Turin towards the autumn of 1729; stays at Annecy until the
spring of 1731; passes the winter of 1731-2 at Neuchatel; first visits
Paris in spring of 1732; returns to Savoy in the early summer of 1732.
But a precise harmonising of the dates in the Confessions is
impossible; Rousseau wrote them three and thirty years after our
present point [in 1766 at Wootton], and never claimed to be exact in
minuteness of date. Fortunately such matters in the present case are
absolutely devoid of importance.

[65] _Conf._, iv. 279, 280.

[66] _Conf._, iv. 290, 291,

[67] _Conf._, iv. 281-283.

[68] _Conf._, v. 325.

[69] _Conf._, v. 360-364. _Corr._, i. 21-24.

[70] _Conf._, v. 349, 350.

[71] Apparently in the summer of 1736, though, the reference to the
return of the French troops at the peace [_Ib._ v. 365] would place it
in 1735.

[72] _Ib._ v. 356

[73] _Ib._

[74] _Conf._, v. 315, 316.

[75] _Ib._ iv. 276. _Nouv. Hel._, II. xiv. 381, etc.

[76] He refers to the ill-health of his youth, _Conf._, vii. 32, and
describes an ominous head seizure while at Chamberi, _Ib._ vi. 396.

[77] Rousseau's description of Les Charmettes is at the end of the
fifth book. The present proprietor keeps the house arranged as it used
to be, and has gathered one or two memorials of its famous tenant,
including his poor _clavecin_ and his watch. In an outside wall,
Herault de Sechelles, when Commissioner from the Convention in the
department of Mont Blanc, inserted a little white stone with two most
lapidary stanzas inscribed upon it, about _genie, solitude, fierte,
gloire, verite, envie_, and the like.

[78] _Reveries_, x. 336 (1778).

[79] _Conf._, vi. 393.

[80] _Conf._, vi. 412.

[81] _Mem. de Mdme. d'Epinay_, i. 394. (M. Boiteau's edition:
Charpentier. 1865.)

[82] _Conf._, vi. 399.

[83] _Ib._ vi. 424. Goethe made a similar experiment; see Mr. Lewes's
_Life_, p. 126.

[84] Bernardin de Saint Pierre tells us this. _Oeuvres_ (Ed. 1818),
xii. 70, etc.

[85] _Conf._, iv. 297. See also the description of the scenery of the
Valais, in the _Nouv. Hel._, Pt. I. Let. xxiii.

[86] George Sand in _Mademoiselle la Quintinie_ (p. 27), a book
containing some peculiarly subtle appreciations of the Savoy
landscape.

[87] _Conf._, iv. 298.

[88] _Conf._, vi. 416, 422, etc.; iii. 164; iii. 203; v. 347; v.