With Madame de Warens, Rousseau's relations, as is intimated above,
became licentious. This continued until, after an interval of years
(nine years, with breaks), in a fit of jealousy he forsook her.
Rousseau's whole life was a series of self-indulgences, groveling,
sometimes, beyond what is conceivable to any one not learning of it all
in detail from the man's own pen. The reader is fain at last to seek the
only relief possible from the sickening story, by flying to the
conclusion that Jean Jacques Rousseau, with all his genius, was wanting
in that mental sanity which is a condition of complete moral
responsibility.
We shall, of course, not follow the "Confessions" through their
disgusting recitals of sin and shame. We should do wrong, however, to
the literary, and even to the moral, character of the work, were we not
to point out that there are frequent oases of sweetness and beauty set
in the wastes of incredible foulness which overspread so widely the
pages of Rousseau's "Confessions." Here, for example, is an idyll of
vagabondage that might almost make one willing to play tramp one's self,
if one by so doing might have such an experience:
I remember, particularly, having passed a delicious night without the
city on a road that skirted the Rhone or the Saone, for I cannot
remember which. On the other side were terraced gardens. It had been a
very warm day; the evening was charming; the dew moistened the faded
grass; a calm night, without a breeze; the air was cool without being
cold; the sun in setting had left crimson vapors in the sky, which
tinged the water with its roseate hue, while the trees along the
terrace were filled with nightingales gushing out melodious answers to
each other's song. I walked along in a species of ecstasy, giving up
heart and senses to the enjoyment of the scene, only slightly sighing
with regret at enjoying it alone. Absorbed in my sweet reverie, I
prolonged my walk far into the night, without perceiving that I was
wearied out. At length I discovered it. I lay voluptuously down on the
tablet of a sort of niche or false door sunk in the terrace wall. The
canopy of my couch was formed by the over-arching boughs of the trees;
a nightingale sat exactly above me; its song lulled me to sleep; my
slumber was sweet, and my awaking still more so. It was broad day; my
eyes, on opening, fell on the water, the verdure, and the admirable
landscape spread out before me. I arose and shook off dull sleep; and,
growing hungry, I gayly directed my steps toward the city, bent on
transforming two _pieces de six blancs_, that I had left, into a good
breakfast. I was so cheerful that I went singing along the whole way.
This happy-go-lucky, vagabond, grown-up child, this sentimentalist of
genius, had now and then different experiences--experiences to which the
reflection of the man grown old attributes important influence on the
formation of his most controlling beliefs:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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