"Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - Confessions of Jean-jacques Rousseau, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rousseau Jacques)

The fathers of this blooming pair,

Our lovers and our friends.



I was the unfortunate fruit of this return, being born ten months

after, in a very weakly and infirm state; my birth cost my mother

her life, and was the first of my misfortunes. I am ignorant how my

father supported her loss at that time, but I know he was ever after

inconsolable. In me he still thought he saw her he so tenderly

lamented, but could never forget that I had been the innocent cause of

his misfortune, nor did he over embrace me, but his sighs, the

convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret

mingled itself with his caresses, though, as may be supposed, they

were not on this account less ardent. When he said to me, "Jean

Jacques, let us talk of your mother," my usual reply was, "Yes,

father, but then, you know, we shall cry," and immediately the tears

started from his eyes. "Ah!" exclaimed he, with agitation, "Give me

back my wife; at least console me for her loss; fill up, dear boy, the

void she has left in my soul. Could I love thee thus wert thou only my

son?" Forty years after this loss he expired in the arms of a second

wife, but the name of the first still vibrated on his lips, still

was her image engraved on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being: of all the gifts it had pleased

Heaven to bestow on them, a feeling heart was the only one that

descended to me; this had been the source of their felicity, it was

the foundation of all my misfortunes.