United States or Saint Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Outina gratefully received the two prisoners whom Laudonniere had sent to propitiate him, feasted the wonderful strangers, and invited them to join him on a raid against his rival, Potanou. Laudonniere had promised to join Satouriona against Outina, and Vasseur now promised to join Outina against Potanon, the hope of finding gold being in both cases the source of this impolitic compliance.

With respect to Madam le Vasseur, I told her we must part; her daughter attempted to make me renounce my resolution, but I was inflexible. I sent her off, to Paris in a carriage of the messenger with all the furniture and effects she and her daughter had in common.

Madam le Vasseur did not want sense, that is address; and pretended to the politeness and airs of the first circles; but she had a mysterious wheedling, which to me was insupportable, gave bad advice to her daughter, endeavored to make her dissemble with me, and separately, cajoled my friends at my expense, and that of each other; excepting these circumstances; she was a tolerably good mother, because she found her account in being so, and concealed the faults of her daughter to turn them to her own advantage.

One day, when I least expected anything of the kind, he wrote to me in behalf of that woman, informing me that Grimm offered to maintain her, and to ask my permission to accept the offer. This I understood consisted in a pension of three hundred livres, and that Madam le Vasseur was to come and live at Deuil, between the Chevrette and Montmorency.

Rousseau was moved with pity for a maid defenceless against a ribald storm, and from pity he advanced to some warmer sentiment, and he and Theresa Le Vasseur took each other for better for worse, in a way informal but sufficiently effective. This was the beginning of a union which lasted for the length of a generation and more, down to the day of Rousseau's most tragical ending.

I embrace Madam le Vasseur and the Criminal." Struck with astonishment at reading this letter I vainly endeavored to find out what it meant. How! instead of answering me with simplicity, he took time to consider of what I had written, as if the time he had already taken was not sufficient!

The long and frequent conversations with Madam le Vasseur, for, several years past, had made a sensible change in this woman's behavior to me, and the change was far from being in my favor. What was the subject of these singular conversations? Why such a profound mystery?

Madam le Vasseur, who perceived I had got more full possession of the heart of Theresa, and that she had lost ground with her, endeavored to regain it; and instead of striving to restore herself to my good opinion by the mediation of her daughter attempted to alienate her affections from me. One of the means she employed was to call her family to her aid.

I made Madam le Vasseur my secretary; I had lodged her with her daughter, and husband, nearer to myself; and she, to save me the expense of a servant, came every morning to make my fire, and to do such other little things as were necessary.

This was one of the atrocious accusations from which he did not except me in his remark; that none but the wicked were alone: and the meaning of his pathetic exclamation with the et cetera, which he had benignantly added: A woman of eighty years of age, etc. I thought the best answer that could be given to this reproach would be from Madam le Vasseur herself.