Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 182, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1919 — A Link With Rousseau. [ARTICLE]

A Link With Rousseau.

A well-known writer in Paris, M. Remezy, can, if he chooses, step into Jean Jacques Rousseau’s shoes —shoes, moreover, that the great genius made himself. The Paris correspondent of the London Evening Standard tells their interesting story: In the little village of Ermenonville, i where Rousseau is buried, there was an inn where he often went. Giard, the innkeeper, was an intimate friend of Rousseau, and he kept on the top of a cupboard a pair of wooden shoes that Rousseau had made. Jean Jacques, after wearing them himself, had given them to the innkeeper, In the early days of the nineteenth century the poet Fabre d’Eglantine visited the little inn, saw the shoes with a paper label on them, and offered to buy one for £2OO or -give £SOO for the pair. The offer was refused. When the innkeeper died he left the sabots to his granddaughter, and she at her death left them to her nephew, M. Paul Bleuze, who sold them or gave them to Remezy.