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Updated: June 22, 2025
There is a pleasant moment when we find him the center of an admiring circle at La Chevrette, falling madly in love with her clever and beautiful sister-in-law the Comtesse d'Houdetot, writing "La Nouvelle Heloise" under the inspiration of this passion, and dreaming in the lovely promenades at Montmorency, quite at peace with the world.
I have heard it said that my choregraphic performance was fairly successful, but there my fancy for the military career ended. General Drouot went back to Nancy; I did not see him again, and I soon fell under other and more lasting influences. Among my father's aides-de-camp there was a young cavalry lieutenant- colonel, the Comte d'Houdetot, who had begun life as a midshipman.
But I had foolishly made of it an affair which could not remain in the state it was, and an explanation was absolutely necessary, unless I quitted the Hermitage, which I had just promised Madam d'Houdetot not to do, at least for the present. Moreover she had required me to make known the reasons for my refusal to my pretended friends, that it might not be imputed to her.
She knew I was writing for Madam d'Houdetot a copy of the New Eloisa. She was desirous to have one on the same footing. This I promised her, and thereby making her one of my customers, I wrote her a polite letter upon the subject, at least such was my intention. Her answer, which was as follows, stupefied me with surprise. VERSAILLES, Tuesday.
It was worth while to hear D'Houdetot tell about the battle of Trafalgar, at which he had been present as a midshipman on board the Algesiras, commanded by his uncle Admiral Magon, how, as he lay on the poop, with both his legs broken by the bursting of a shell, he saw his uncle the admiral receive his death-blow, at the very moment when, wounded already, and his hat and wig carried away by a shot, he had thrown himself on to the nettings, shouting to his crew, "The first man who boards that ship with me shall have the Cross;" and how too, the boarding party having been driven back, the mizzen-mast of the Algesiras, cut through by a round shot, fell across the British ship, throwing a comrade of D'Houdetot's, the midshipman of the maintop, beyond it, into the sea, and how that middy swam back to the Algesiras.
I made and kept to the resolution of seeing nothing in Madam d'Houdetot but my friend and the mistress of Saint Lambert; and I passed with her a tete-a-fete of four hours in a most delicious calm, infinitely preferable, even with respect to enjoyment, to the paroxysms of a burning fever, which, always, until that moment, I had had when in her presence.
"They have played us an evil turn," cried Madame d'Houdetot; "they have been unjust to me, but that is no matter. Either let us break off at once, or be what you ought to be." This was Rousseau's first taste of the ashes of shame into which the lusciousness of such forbidden fruit, plucked at the expense of others, is ever apt to be transformed.
She was not always, however, so unfortunate in her choice. She found a more amiable and constant object for her affections in Mme. d'Houdetot, a charming woman who, in spite of her errors, held a very warm place in the hearts of her cotemporaries.
Madam d'Houdetot informed me of the day on which she intended to come and bid adieu to the valley, and gave me a rendezvous at Laubonne. This happened to be the same day on which Madam d'Epinay left the Chevrette to go to Paris for the purpose of completing preparations for her journey. Fortunately she set off in the morning, and I had still time to go and dine with her sister-in-law.
Henry V. was unwilling to confront such heroic despair; and on the 13th of January, 1419, he granted the Rouennese a capitulation, from which seven persons only were excepted, Robert Delivet, the archbishop's vicar-general, who from the top of the ramparts had excommunicated the foreign conqueror; D'Houdetot, baillie of the city; John Segneult, the mayor; Alan Blanchard, the captain of the militia-crossbowmen, and three other burgesses.
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