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

I came into the world with so few signs of life, that they

entertained but little hope of preserving me, with the seeds of a

disorder that has gathered strength with years, and from which I am

now relieved at intervals, only to suffer a different, though more

intolerable evil. I owed my preservation to one of my father's

sisters, an amiable and virtuous girl, who took the most tender care

of me; she is yet living, nursing, at the age of fourscore, a

husband younger than herself, but worn out with excessive drinking.

Dear aunt! I freely forgive your having preserved my life, and only

lament that it is not in my power to bestow on the decline of your

days the tender solicitude and care you lavished on the first dawn

of mine. My nurse, Jaqueline, is likewise living, and in good

health- the hands that opened my eyes to the light of this world may

close them at my death. We suffer before we think; it is the common

lot of humanity. I experienced more than my proportion of it. I have

no knowledge of what passed prior to my fifth or sixth year; I

recollect nothing of learning to read, I only remember what effect the

first considerable exercise of it produced on my mind; and from that

moment I date an uninterrupted knowledge of myself.

Every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection

of romances which had been my mother's. My father's design was only to

improve me in reading, and he thought these entertaining works were

calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon found ourselves

so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately

read whole nights together, and could not bear to give over until at