The picture Rousseau is "about to draw" has in it a certain Madame de Warens for a principal figure. (Apprentice Jean Jacques has left his master, and entered on a vagabond life.) This lady is a character very difficult for us Protestant Americans in our contrasted society to conceive as real or as possible. She kept a house of, what shall we call it? detention, for souls doubtfully in the way of being reclaimed from Protestant error into the bosom of the Roman-Catholic Church. She was herself a Roman-Catholic convert from Protestantism. She had forsaken a husband, not loved, and was living on a bounty from King Victor Amadeus of Sardinia. For Annecy, the home of Madame de Warens, our young Jean Jacques, sent thither by a Roman-Catholic curate, sets out on foot. The distance was but one day's walk; which one day's walk, however, the humor of the wanderer stretched into a saunter of three days. The man of fifty-four, become the biographer of his own youth, finds no loathness of self-respect to prevent his detailing the absurd adventures with which he diverted himself on the way. For example:-- Not a country-seat could I see, either to the right or left, without going after the adventure which I was certain awaited me. I could not muster courage to enter the mansion, nor even to knock, for I was excessively timid; but I sang beneath the most inviting window, very much astonished to find, after wasting my breath, that neither lady nor miss made her appearance, attracted by the beauty of my voice, or the spice of my songs,--seeing that I knew some capital ones that my comrades had taught me, and which I sang in the most admirable manner. Rousseau describes the emotions he experienced in his first meeting with Madame de Warens:-- I had pictured to myself a grim old devotee--M. de Pontverre's "worthy lady" could, in my opinion, be none other. But lo, a countenance beaming with charms, beautiful, mild blue eyes, a complexion of dazzling fairness, the outline of an enchanting neck! Nothing escaped the rapid glance of the young proselyte; for that instant I was hers, sure that a religion preached by such missionaries could not fail to lead to paradise!