Jean Jacques Rousseau bust

Some memories are worth remembering, others deserve a golden baluster. It was on Easter Day 1728 that Jean Jacques Rousseau met Madame de Warens. She was 28, he was15. Thus, began what he called the “brief happiness of his life”. At her Charmettes residence in Chambéry, the baroness took in the young man who had fled his native Switzerland because he was in conflict with the clergy of Geneva. She became his protector for almost 14 years. She taught him literature and music and planned his future. A few years later the philosopher and Madame de Warens would have a romantic relationship. It was she who inspired the character of Julie in Rousseau’s most famous novel: “Julie or the New Heloise”. The small monument is decorated with intertwined hearts and periwinkles, the blue mountain flowers that were to Rousseau what the madeleine was to Proust. Recollections of this encounter can be found in the author’s “Confessions”. This emblematic work is considered to be the first autobiography in the French language.