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AppendixI Letters referred to in the text of the Confessionsl From Rousseau toMme de Francueil (p. 301)2 From Paris, April 20,1751 Yes, Madame, I have put my children into the Foundling Hospital. I have entrusted the establishment made for that purpose with their support. Ifmy poverty and my illness deprive me of the powerof carrying out such a dear care, it is a misfortune about which I must feel sorry, and not a crime for which I must reproach myself. I owe them sustenance, I have procured it for them better or at least more securely than I would have been able to give it to them myself. This point is above everything else. Next comes the consideration of their mother who must not be dishonored. You are acquainted with my situation, I earn my bread from day to day with difficulty enough, how would I feed a family in addition, and if I was constrained to have recourse to the profession of author, how would domestic cares and the worry of children in my garret leave me the tranquillity of mind necessary to do a lucrative work? Writings dictated by hunger hardly bring in anything and that resource is soon exhausted. Thus it would be necessary to have recourse to protection , to intrigue, to tricks, to court some low employment, to turn it to account by the ordinary means, otherwise it will not feed me and will soon be taken away from me, in sum to abandon myself to every infamy for which I am filled with such a just horror. To feed myself, my children, and their mother from the blood of the poor! No madame, it would be better for them to be orphans than to have a rogue for a father. Overpowered by a painful and mortal malady, I can no longer hope for a long life. If, during my life, I was able to support these unfortunate people who are destined to suffer one day, they would paydearly for the advantage of having been kept up a little more delicately than they could be where they are. Their mother, a victim of my indiscreet zeal, burdened by her own shame and her own needs, almost as valetudinary as myself and even less in a condition to feed them than I, will be forced to abandon them to themselves, and I do not see anything for them but the alternative of making themselves into bootblacks or bandits, which soon comes down to the same thing. At least if their status were legitimate, they could find resources more easily, but since they have to carry the dishonor of their birth and that of their poverty at the same time, what will become of them? Why am I not married, you will say to me? Ask your unjust laws, madame. It did not suit me to enter into an eternal commitment, and one will never prove to me that any duty obliges me to do so. What is certain is that I have done nothing SSI SS2 Appendix I of the sort and that I do not want to do anything of the sort. One must not have children if one cannot feed them. Excuse me, madame, nature wants one to have them because the earth produces enough to feed the whole world, but it is the social station of the rich, it is your station that steals my children's bread from mine; nature also wants one to provide for their sustenance, that is what I have done; if a refuge for them did not exist, I would do my duty and resolve to die of hunger myself rather than not feed them. Does this expression Foundling Hospital give you the impression that they found these children in the streets exposed to perish ifchance does not save them? Rest assured that you would not have any more horror than I would for the unworthy father who could resolve upon that barbarism; it is too far from my heart for me to deign to justify myself for it. There are established rules, inform yourself about what they are and you will learn that the children leave the handis of the midwife only to pass into those of a nurse. I know that these children are not brought up delicately, so much the better for them, they become more robust for it, they are not given anything superfluous but they have what is necessary, they are not...

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