INTRODUCTION.
ABOUT thirty years ago a young man, who had forsaken his own country and rambled into Italy, found himself reduced to a condition of great poverty and distress. He had been bred a Calvinist; but in consequence of his misconduct and of being unhappily a fugitive in a foreign country, without money or friends, he was induced to change his religion for the sake of subsistence. To this end he procured admittance into a hospice for catechumens, that is to say, a house established for the reception of proselytes. The instructions he here received concerning some controversial points excited doubts he had not before entertained, and first caused him to realize the evil of the step he had taken. He was taught strange dogmas, and was eye-witness to stranger manners;[1] and to these he saw himself a destined victim.
- ↑ In his Confessions Rousseau describes more particularly the “strange manners” to which he here refers: and was greatly shocked to observe that his exposure excited no concern at the Hospice. On the contrary, he “was sharply reprimanded by one of the administrators for his babbling” and was charged with “bringing scandal on a holy house and making much ado about nothing.”—E.
