The resources he really found were in ill accord with the pictures his imagination formed. He was obliged to hire himself as a servant. At first he served a fair shopkeeper; and then became the attendant of an old countess Vercelli, with whom he lived till her death, which occurred only three months after. It was on this occasion that he committed that fault, remorse for which pursued him till his death. During the illness of his mistress he had abstracted a riband from her wardrobe, with the intent of bestowing it on a maidservant of the house. The riband was missed, sought for, and found on him. False shame led him to deny the theft; and, when more closely questioned, he declared that the stolen riband had been given to him by the very girl on whom he had intended to bestow it. The two were confronted; the innocent servant implored him with tears to retract his falsehood, but he resolutely maintained his story. He was believed. He tells this tale in his "Confessions;" he declares that the avowal cost him more pain than any other--that remorse never ceased to pursue him--the image of the injured girl, reproaching him for the wrong he had done her, often haunted his dreams--it weighed on his conscience as the most atrocious crime. He had sought merely to shelter himself, and false shame prevented his retracting the accusation once made; but the thought of his victim driven to want and infamy by his lie made him often look on his after sufferings as but the just retribution of his crime. This is one of the laws of life. The shadows of our past actions stalk beside us during our existence, and never cease to torment or to soothe, according as they are ill or good, that mysterious portion of mind termed conscience. Rousseau was now again thrown back upon independent poverty. His time was not all lost: he frequented the society of an excellent man, a Savoyard abbé, M. Gaime, who enlightened his mind as to his real duties, instructed him in the better part of religion, and corrected his false estimate of society. These lessons were often forgotten, at least, inasmuch as they ought to have served as guides for conduct; but they were as dew upon a field; in due time, the hidden seeds of thought, then sown, sprang up. While thus unemployed, and not looking beyond the hour, the nephew of his late mistress sent for him, and told him that he had found a situation: he was to become a domestic in a noble family of Turin: this was a fall for the youth's pride, but he had no other resource against want.