Page "Jean-Jacques Rousseau" Paragraph 12

Virtually, all our information about Rousseau's youth has come from his posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks.

At age 13, Rousseau was apprenticed first to a notary and then to an engraver who beat him.

At 15, he ran away from Geneva ( on 14 March 1728 ) after returning to the city and finding the city gates locked due to the curfew.

In adjoining Savoy he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who introduced him to Françoise-Louise de Warens, age 29.

She was a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband.

As professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of Piedmont to help bring Protestants to Catholicism.

They sent the boy to Turin, the capital of Savoy ( which included Piedmont, in what is now Italy ), to complete his conversion.

This resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later revert to Calvinism in order to regain it.