The first attempt to find a settlement for Rousseau, was with the French gardener at Fulham, already alluded to. The arrangement proposed by Hume was, that the gardener was to receive from fifty to sixty pounds a-year, as the consideration for boarding Rousseau and Mademoiselle, but that he was only to draw twenty-five pounds from Rousseau, from whom he was to keep the arrangement secret.[311:1] Rousseau rejected this arrangement with disgust; and various other efforts to find him a suitable home were equally unsuccessful. Hume, who, as Rousseau himself tells Madame de Boufflers, was more anxious about his welfare than he was himself, appears to have spent week after week, in the vain pursuit of a resting place for the wanderer--no sooner framing a hopeful scheme than it was contemptuously rejected. It does not appear, however, that the inquiries were conducted precisely in the sphere in which Rousseau liked to act. It is clear that he had not come to Britain to negotiate with farmers at Chiswick, or French gardeners at Fulham. He undoubtedly expected much more distinguished titles to be mixed up with his arrangements; and we find that it was not till a rich man's well kept country mansion was put at his disposal, that he deigned to be for a moment satisfied. A letter to Blair, contains a very full narrative of the subsequent proceedings. HUME _to_ DR. BLAIR.[312:1] _Lisle Street, Leicester Fields, 25th March, 1766._ DEAR DOCTOR,--I had asked M. Rousseau the question you propose to me: He answered, that the story of his "Héloise" had some general and distant resemblance to reality; such as was sufficient to warm his imagination and assist his invention: but that all the chief circumstances were fictitious. I have heard in France, that he had been employed to teach music to a young lady, a boarder in a convent at Lyons; and that the master and scholar fell mutually in love with each other; but the affair was not attended with any consequences. I think this work his masterpiece; though he himself told me, that he valued most his _Contrat Social_; which is as preposterous a judgment as that of Milton, who preferred the Paradise Regained to all his other performances.