Chapter XVII

ROUSSEAU: 1712-1778; St. Pierre: 1737-1814.

There are two Rousseaus in French literature. At least there was a first, until the second effaced him, and became the only.

We speak, of course, in comparison, and hyperbolically. J. B. Rousseau is still named as a lyric poet of the time of Louis XIV. But when Rousseau, without initials, is spoken of, it is always Jean Jacques Rousseau that is meant.

Jean Jacques Rousseau is perhaps the most squalid, as it certainly is one of the most splendid, among French literary names. The squalor belongs chiefly to the man, but the splendor is wholly the writer's. There is hardly another example in the world's literature of a union so striking of these opposites.

Rousseau's life he has himself told, in the best, the worst, and the most imperishable of his books, the "Confessions." This book is one to which the adjective charming attaches, in a peculiarly literal sense of the word. The spell, however, is repellent as well as attractive. But the attraction of the style asserts and pronounces itself only the more, in triumph over the much there is in the matter to disgust and revolt. It is quite the most offensive, and it is well-nigh the most fascinating, book that we know.

The "Confessions" begin as follows:

I purpose an undertaking that never had an example, and whose
execution never will have an imitator. I would exhibit to my fellows a
man, in all the truth of nature, and that man--myself.

Myself alone. I know my own heart, and I am acquainted with men. I am
made unlike any one I have ever seen--I dare believe unlike any living
being. If no better than, I am at least different from, others.
Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the mold wherein I was
cast, can be determined only after having read me.

Let the last trumpet sound when it will, I will come, with this book
in my hand, and present myself before the Sovereign Judge. I will
boldly proclaim: Thus have I acted, thus have I thought, such was I.
With equal frankness have I disclosed the good and the evil. I have
omitted nothing bad, added nothing good; and if I have happened to
make use of some unimportant ornament, it has, in every case, been
simply for the purpose of filling up a void occasioned by my lack of
memory. I may have taken for granted as true what I knew to be
possible, never what I knew to be false. Such as I was, I have
exhibited myself--despicable and vile, when so; virtuous, generous,
sublime, when so. I have unveiled my interior being, such as Thou,
Eternal Existence, hast beheld it. Assemble around me the numberless
throng of my fellow-mortals; let them listen to my confessions, let
them blush at my depravities, let them shrink appalled at my miseries.
Let each of them, in his turn, with equal sincerity, lay bare his
heart at the foot of thy throne, and then let a single one tell thee,
if he dare, _I was better than that man_.

Notwithstanding our autobiographer's disavowal of debt to example for the idea of his "Confessions," it seems clear that Montaigne here was at least inspiration, if not pattern, to Rousseau. But Rousseau resolved to do what Montaigne had done, more ingenuously and more courageously than Montaigne had done it. This writer will make himself his subject, and then treat his subject with greater frankness than any man before him ever used about himself, or than any man after him would ever use. He undoubtedly succeeded in his attempt. His frankness, in fact, is so forward and eager that it is probably even inventive of things disgraceful to himself. Montaigne makes great pretense of telling his own faults, but you observe that he generally chooses rather amiable faults of his own to tell. Rousseau's morbid vulgarity leads him to disclose traits in himself of character or of behavior, that, despite whatever contrary wishes on your part, compel your contempt of the man. And it is for the man who confesses, almost more than for the man who is guilty, that you feel the contempt.

The "Confessions" proceed:

I was born at Geneva, in 1712, of Isaac Rousseau and Susannah Bernard,
citizens.... I came into the world weak and sickly. I cost my mother
her life, and my birth was the first of my misfortunes.

I never learned how my father supported his loss, but I know that he
remained ever after inconsolable.... When he used to say to me, "Jean
Jacques, let us speak of your mother," my usual reply was, "Well,
father, we'll cry then," a reply which would instantly bring the tears
to his eyes. "Ah!" he would exclaim with agitation, "give me her back,
console me for her loss, fill up the void she has left in my soul.
Could I love thee thus wert thou but _my_ son?" Forty years after
having lost her he expired in the arms of a second wife, but with the
name of the first on his lips, and her image engraven on his heart.

Such were the authors of my being. Of all the gifts Heaven had
allotted them, a feeling heart was the only one I had inherited.
While, however, this had been the source of their happiness, it became
the spring of all my misfortunes.

"A feeling heart!" That expression tells the literary secret of Rousseau. It is hardly too much to say that Rousseau was the first French writer to write with his heart; but heart's blood was the ink in which almost every word of Rousseau's was written. This was the spring of his marvelous power. Rousseau:

My mother had left a number of romances. These father and I betook us
to reading during the evenings. At first the sole object was, by means
of entertaining books, to improve me in reading; but, ere long, the
charm became so potent, that we read turn about without intermission,
and passed whole nights in this employment. Never could we break up
till the end of the volume. At times my father, hearing the swallows
of a morning, would exclaim, quite ashamed of himself, "Come, let's to
bed; I'm more of a child than you are!"

The elder Rousseau was right respecting himself. And such a father would almost necessarily have such a child. Jean Jacques Rousseau is to be judged tenderly for his faults. What birth and what breeding were his! The "Confessions" go on:

I soon acquired, by this dangerous course, not only an extreme
facility in reading and understanding, but, for my age, a quite
unprecedented acquaintance with the passions. I had not the slightest
conception of things themselves at a time when the whole round of
sentiments was already perfectly familiar to me. I had apprehended
nothing--I had felt all.

Some hint now of other books read by the boy:

.... Plutarch especially became my favorite reading. The pleasure
which I found in incessantly reperusing him cured me in some measure
of the romance madness: and I soon came to prefer Agesilaus, Brutus,
and Aristides to Orondates, Artemenes, and Juba. From these
interesting studies, joined to the conversations to which they gave
rise with my father, resulted that free, republican spirit, that
haughty and untamable character, fretful of restraint or subjection,
which has tormented me my life long, and that in situations the least
suitable for giving it play. Incessantly occupied with Rome and
Athens, living, so to speak, with their great men, born myself the
citizen of a republic [Geneva], the son of a father with whom
patriotism was the ruling passion, I caught the flame from him--I
imagined myself a Greek or a Roman, and became the personage whose
life I was reading.

On such food of reading and of reverie, young Rousseau's imagination and sentiment battened, while his reason and his practical sense starved and died within him. Unconsciously thus in part were formed the dreamer of the "Emile" and of "The Social Contract." Another glimpse of the home life--if home life such experience can be called--of this half-orphan, homeless Genevan boy:

I had a brother, my elder by seven years.... He fell into the ways of
debauchery, even before he was old enough to be really a libertine.
... I remember once when my father was chastising him severely and in
anger, that I impetuously threw myself between them, clasping him
tightly. I thus covered him with my body, receiving the blows that
were aimed at him; and I held out so persistently in this position,
that whether softened by my cries and tears, or fearing that I should
get the worst of it, my father was forced to forgive him. In the end
my brother turned out so bad that he ran away and disappeared
altogether.

It is pathetic--Rousseau's attempted contrast following, between the paternal neglect of his older brother and the paternal indulgence of himself:

If this poor lad was carelessly brought up, it was quite otherwise
with his brother.... My desires were so little excited, and so little
crossed, that it never came into my head to have any. I can solemnly
aver, that till the time when I was bound to a master I never knew
what it was to have a whim.

Poor lad! "Never knew what it was to have a whim!" It well might be, however--his boy's life all one whim uncrossed, unchecked; no contrast of saving restraint, to make him know that he was living by whim alone!

Young Jean Jacques was at length apprenticed to an engraver. He describes the contrast of his new situation and the effect of the contrast upon his own character and career:

I learned to covet in silence, to dissemble, to dissimulate, to lie,
and at last to steal, a propensity for which I had never hitherto had
the slightest inclination, and of which I have never since been able
quite to cure myself....

My first theft was the result of complaisance, but it opened the door
to others which had not so laudable a motive.

My master had a journeyman named M. Verrat.... [He] took it into his
head to rob his mother of some of her early asparagus and sell it,
converting the proceeds into some extra good breakfasts. As he did not
wish to expose himself, and not being very nimble, he selected me for
this expedition. Long did I stickle, but he persisted. I never could
resist kindness, so I consented. I went every morning to the garden,
gathered the best of the asparagus, and took it to "the Molard," where
some good creature, perceiving that I had just been stealing it, would
insinuate that little fact, so as to get it the cheaper. In my terror
I took whatever she chose to give me and carried it to M. Verrat.

This little domestic arrangement continued for several days before it
came into my head to rob the robber, and tithe M. Verrat for the
proceeds of the asparagus.... I thus learned that to steal was, after
all, not so very terrible a thing as I had conceived, and ere long I
turned this discovery to so good an account, that nothing I had an
inclination for could safely be left within my reach....

And now, before giving myself over to the fatality of my destiny, let
me, for a moment, contemplate what would naturally have been my lot
had I fallen into the hands of a better master. Nothing was more
agreeable to my tastes, nor better calculated to render me happy, than
the calm and obscure condition of a good artisan, more especially in
certain lines, such as that of an engraver at Geneva.... In my native
country, in the bosom of my religion, of my family, and my friends, I
should have led a life gentle and uncheckered as became my character,
in the uniformity of a pleasing occupation and among connections dear
to my heart. I should have been a good Christian, a good citizen, a
good father, a good friend, a good artisan, and a good man in every
respect. I should have loved my station; it may be I should have been
an honor to it; and after having passed an obscure and simple, though
even and happy, life, I should peacefully have departed in the bosom
of my kindred. Soon, it may be, forgotten, I should at least have been
regretted as long as the remembrance of me survived.

Instead of this ... what a picture am I about to draw!

Thus ends the first book of the "Confessions."

The picture Rousseau is "about to draw" has in it a certain Madame de Warens for a principal figure. This lady, a Roman Catholic convert from Protestantism, 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 lothness 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!

This abnormally susceptible youth had remarkable experiences, all within his own soul, during his sojourn, of a few days only, on the present occasion, under Madame de Warens's hospitable roof. These experiences, the autobiographer, old enough to call himself "old dotard," has, nevertheless, not grown wise enough to be ashamed to be very detailed and psychological in recounting. It was a case of precocious love at first sight. One could afford to laugh at it as ridiculous, but that it had a sequel full of sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father as follows:

My father was not only an honorable man, but a person of the most
reliable probity, and endowed with one of those powerful minds that
perform deeds of loftiest heroism. I may add, he was a good father,
especially to me. Tenderly did he love me, but he loved his pleasures
also, and, since our living apart, other ties had, in a measure,
weakened his paternal affection. He had married again, at Nyon; and
though his wife was no longer of an age to present me with brothers,
yet she had connections; another family circle was thus formed, other
objects engrossed his attention, and the new domestic relations no
longer so frequently brought back the remembrance of me. My father was
growing old, and had nothing on which to rely for the support of his
declining years. My brother and I had something coming to us from my
mother's fortune; the interest of this my father was to receive during
our absence. This consideration did not present itself to him
directly, nor did it stand in the way of his doing his duty; it had,
however, a silent, and to himself imperceptible, influence, and at
times slackened his zeal, which, unacted upon by this, would have been
carried much farther. This, I think, was the reason, that, having
traced me as far as Annecy, he did not follow me to Chamberi, where he
was morally certain of overtaking me. This will also explain why, in
visiting him many times after my flight, I received from him on every
occasion a father's kindness, though unaccompanied by any very
pressing efforts to retain me.

Rousseau's filial regard for his father was peculiar. It did not lead him to hide, it only led him to account for, his father's sordidness. The son generalized and inferred a moral maxim for the conduct of life from this behavior of the father's--a maxim, which, as he thought, had done him great good. He says:

This conduct on the part of a father of whose affection and virtue I
have had so many proofs, has given rise within me to reflections on my
own character which have not a little contributed to maintain my heart
uncorrupted. I have derived therefrom this great maxim of morality,
perhaps the only one of any use in practice; namely, to avoid such
situations as put our duty in antagonism with our interest, or
disclose our own advantage in the misfortunes of another, certain that
in such circumstances, however sincere the love of virtue we bring
with us, it will sooner or later, and whether we perceive it or not,
become weakened, and we shall come to be unjust and culpable in our
acts without having ceased to be upright and blameless in our
intentions.

The fruitful maxim thus deduced by Rousseau, he thinks he tried faithfully to put in practice. With apparent perfect assurance concerning himself, he says:

I have sincerely desired to do what was right. I have, with all the
energy of my character, shunned situations which set my interest in
opposition to the interest of another, thus inspiring me with a secret
though involuntary desire prejudicial to that man.

Jean Jacques at Turin made speed to convert himself, by the abjurations required, into a pretty good Catholic. He was hereon free to seek his fortune in the Sardinian capital. This he did by getting successively various situations in service. In one of these he stole, so he tells us, a piece of ribbon, which was soon found in his possession. He said a maid-servant, naming her, gave it to him. The two were confronted with each other. In spite of the poor girl's solemn appeal, Jean Jacques persisted in his lie against her. Both servants were discharged. The autobiographer protests that he has suffered much remorse for this lie of his to the harm of the innocent maid. He expresses confident hope that his suffering sorrow, already experienced on his behalf, will stand him in stead of punishment that might be his due in a future state. Remorse is a note in Rousseau that distinguishes him from Montaigne. Montaigne reviews his own life to live over his sins, not to repent of them.

The end of several vicissitudes is, that young Rousseau gets back to Madame de Warens. She welcomes him kindly. He says:

From the first day, the most affectionate familiarity sprang up
between us, and that to the same degree in which it continued during
all the rest of her life. _Petit_--Child--was my name,
_Maman_--Mamma--hers; and _Petit_ and _Maman_ we remained, even when
the course of time had all but effaced the difference of our ages.
These two names seem to me marvelously well to express our tone toward
each other, the simplicity of our manners, and, more than all, the
relation of our hearts. She was to me the tenderest of mothers, never
seeking her own pleasure, but ever my welfare; and if the senses had
anything to do with my attachment for her, it was not to change its
nature, but only to render it more exquisite, and intoxicate me with
the charm of having a young and pretty mamma whom it was delightful
for me to caress. I say quite literally, to caress; for it never
entered into her head to deny me the tenderest maternal kisses and
endearments, nor into my heart to abuse them. Some may say that, in
the end, quite other relations subsisted between us. I grant it; but
have patience--I cannot tell everything at once.

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:

One day, among others, having purposely turned aside to get a closer
view of a spot that appeared worthy of all admiration, I grew so
delighted with it, and wandered round it so often, that I at length
lost myself completely. After several hours of useless walking, weary
and faint with hunger and thirst, I entered a peasant's hut which did
not present a very promising appearance, but it was the only one I saw
around. I conceived it to be here as at Geneva and throughout
Switzerland, where all the inhabitants in easy circumstances are in
the situation to exercise hospitality. I entreated the man to get me
some dinner, offering to pay for it. He presented me with some skimmed
milk and coarse barley bread, observing that that was all he had. I
drank the milk with delight, and ate the bread, chaff and all; but
this was not very restorative to a man exhausted with fatigue. The
peasant, who was watching me narrowly, judged of the truth of my story
by the sincerity of my appetite. All of a sudden, after having said
that he saw perfectly well that I was a good and true young fellow
that did not come to betray him, he opened a little trap-door by the
side of his kitchen, went down and returned a moment afterward with a
good brown loaf of pure wheat, the remains of a toothsome ham, and a
bottle of wine, the sight of which rejoiced my heart more than all the
rest. To these he added a good thick omelette, and I made such a
dinner as none but a walker ever enjoyed. When it came to pay, lo! his
disquietude and fears again seized him; he would none of my money, and
rejected it with extraordinary manifestations of disquiet. The
funniest part of the matter was, that I could not conceive what he was
afraid of. At length, with fear and trembling, he pronounced those
terrible words, _Commissioners_ and _Cellar-rats_. He gave me to
understand that he concealed his wine because of the excise, and his
bread on account of the tax, and that he was a lost man if they got
the slightest inkling that he was not dying of hunger. Everything he
said to me touching this matter, whereof, indeed, I had not the
slightest idea, produced an impression on me that can never be
effaced. It became the germ of that inextinguishable hatred that
afterward sprang up in my heart against the vexations to which these
poor people are subject, and against their oppressors. This man,
though in easy circumstances, dared not eat the bread he had gained by
the sweat of his brow, and could escape ruin only by presenting the
appearance of the same misery that reigned around him.

A hideously false world, that world of French society was, in Rousseau's time. The falseness was full ripe to be laid bare by some one; and Rousseau's experience of life, as well as his temperament and his genius, fitted him to do the work of exposure that he did. What one emphatically calls character was sadly wanting in Rousseau--how sadly, witness such an acted piece of mad folly as the following:

I, without knowing aught of the matter, ... gave myself out for a
[musical] composer. Nor was this all: having been presented to M. de
Freytorens, law professor, who loved music, and gave concerts at his
house, nothing would do but I must give him a sample of my talent; so
I set about composing a piece for his concert quite as boldly as
though I had really been an adept in the science. I had the constancy
to work for fifteen days on this fine affair, to copy it fair, write
out the different parts, and distribute them with as much assurance as
though it had been a masterpiece of harmony. Then, what will scarcely
be believed, but which yet is gospel truth, worthily to crown this
sublime production I tacked to the end thereof a pretty minuet which
was then having a run on the streets.... I gave it as my own just as
resolutely as though I had been speaking to inhabitants of the moon.

They assembled to perform my piece. I explain to each the nature of
the movement, the style of execution, and the relations of the
parts--I was very full of business. For five or six minutes they were
tuning; to me each minute seemed an age. At length, all being ready, I
rap with a handsome paper _baton_ on the leader's desk the five or six
beats of the "_Make ready_." Silence is made--I gravely set to beating
time--they commence! No, never since French operas began, was there
such a _charivari_ heard. Whatever they might have thought of my
pretended talent, the effect was worse than they could possibly have
imagined. The musicians choked with laughter; the auditors opened
their eyes and would fain have closed their ears. But that was an
impossibility. My tormenting set of symphonists, who seemed rather to
enjoy the fun, scraped away with a din sufficient to crack the
tympanum of one born deaf. I had the firmness to go right ahead,
however, sweating, it is true, at every pore, but held back by shame;
not daring to retreat, and glued to the spot. For my consolation I
heard the company whispering to each other, quite loud enough for it
to reach my ear: "It is not bearable!" said one. "What music gone
mad!" cried another. "What a devilish din!" added a third. Poor Jean
Jacques, little dreamedst thou, in that cruel moment, that one day
before the king of France and all the court, thy sounds would excite
murmurs of surprise and applause, and that in all the boxes around
thee the loveliest ladies would burst forth with, "What charming
sounds! what enchanting music! every strain reaches the heart!"

But what restored every one to good humor was the minuet. Scarcely had
they played a few measures than I heard bursts of laughter break out
on all hands. Every one congratulated me on my fine musical taste;
they assured me that this minuet would make me spoken about, and that
I merited the louded praises. I need not attempt depicting my agony,
nor own that I well deserved it.

Readers have now had an opportunity to judge for themselves, by specimen, of the style, both of the writer and of the man Jean Jacques Rousseau. The writer's style they must have felt even through the medium of imperfect anonymous translation, to be a charming one. If they have felt the style of the man to be contrasted, as squalor is contrasted with splendor, that they must not suppose to be a contrast of which Jean Jacques himself, the confessor, was in the least displacently conscious. Far from it. In the latter part of his "Confessions," a part that deals with the author as one already now acknowledged a power in the world of letters, though with all his chief works still to write, Rousseau speaks thus of himself (he was considering at the time the ways and means available to him of obtaining a livelihood):

I felt that writing for bread would soon have extinguished my genius,
and destroyed my talents, which were less in my pen than in my heart,
and solely proceeded from an elevated and noble manner of thinking....
It is too difficult to think nobly when we think for a livelihood.

Is not that finely said? And one need not doubt that it was said with perfect sincerity. For our own part, paradoxical though it be to declare it, we are wholly willing to insist that Rousseau did think on a lofty plane. The trouble with him was, not that he thus thought with his heart, rather than with his head--which, however, he did--but that he thought with his heart alone, and not at all with his conscience and his will. In a word, his thought was sentiment rather than thought. He was a sentimentalist instead of a thinker. One illustration of the divorce that he decreed for himself, or rather--for we have used too positive a form of expression--that he allowed to subsist, between sentiment and conduct, will suffice. It was presently to be his fortune, as author of a tract on education (the "Emile"), to change the habit of a nation in the matter of the nurture for babes. French mothers of the higher social class in Rousseau's time almost universally gave up their infants to be nursed at alien bosoms. Rousseau so eloquently denounced the unnaturalness of this, that from his time it became the fashion for French mothers to suckle their children themselves. Meantime, the preacher himself of this beautiful humanity, living in unwedded union with a woman (not Madame de Warens, but a woman of the laboring class, found after Madame de Warens was abandoned), sent his illegitimate children, against the mother's remonstrance, one after another, to the number of five, to be brought up unknown at the hospital for foundlings! He tells the story himself in his "Confessions." This course on his own part he subsequently laments with many tears and many self-upbraidings. But these, alas, he intermingles with self-justifications, nearly as many--so that at last it is hard to say whether the balance of his judgment inclines for or against himself in the matter. A paradox of inconsistencies and self-contradictions, this man--a problem in human character, of which the supposition of partial insanity in him, long working subtly in the blood, seems the only solution. The occupation finally adopted by Rousseau for obtaining subsistence was the copying of music. It extorts from one a measure of involuntary respect for Rousseau, to see patiently toiling at this slavish work, to earn its owner bread, the same pen which had lately set all Europe in ferment with the "Emile" and "The Social Contract."

From Rousseau's "Confessions," we have not room to purvey further. It is a melancholy book--written under monomaniac suspicion on the part of the author that he was the object of a wide-spread conspiracy against his reputation, his peace of mind, and even his life. The poor, shattered, self-consumed sensualist and sentimentalist paid dear in the agonies of his closing years for the indulgences of an unregulated life. The tender-hearted, really affectionate, and loyal friend came at length to live in a world of his own imagination, full of treachery to himself. David Hume, the Scotchman, tried to befriend him; but the monomaniac was incapable of being befriended. Nothing could be more pitiful than were the decline and the extinction that occurred of so much brilliant genius, and so much lovable character. It is even doubtful whether Rousseau did not at last take his own life. The voice of accusation is silenced in the presence of an earthly retribution so dreadful. One may not indeed approve, but one may at least be free to pity, more than he blames, in judging Rousseau.

Accompanying, and in some sort complementing the "Confessions," are often published several detached pieces called "Reveries," or "Walks." These are very peculiar compositions, and very characteristic of the author. They are dreamy meditations or reveries, sad, even somber, in spirit, but "beautiful exceedingly," in form of expression. Such works as the "Rene" of Chateaubriand, works but too abundant since in French literature, must all trace their pedigree to Rousseau's "Walks."

This author's books in general are now little read. They worked their work and ceased. But there are in some of them passages that continue to live. Of these, perhaps quite the most famous is the "Savoyard Curate's Confession of Faith," a document of some length, incorporated into the "Emile." This, taken as a whole, is the most seductively eloquent argument against Christianity that perhaps ever was written. It contains, however, concessions to the sublime elevation of Scripture and to the unique virtue and majesty of Jesus, which are often quoted, and which will bear quoting here. The Savoyard Curate is represented speaking to a young friend as follows:--

I will confess to you further, that the majesty of the Scriptures
strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel hath its
influence on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all
their pomp of diction; how mean, how contemptible, are they, compared
with the Scripture! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and
sublime should be merely the work of man? Is it possible that the
Sacred Personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere
man? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious
sectary? What sweetness, what purity, in his manners! What an
affecting gracefulness in his delivery! What sublimity in his maxims!
What profound wisdom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what
subtilty, what truth, in his replies! How great the command over his
passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live
and die, without weakness and without ostentation? When Plato
described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt,
yet meriting the highest reward of virtue, he described exactly the
character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking that all
the Fathers perceived it.

What prepossession, what blindness, must it be to compare the son of
Sophroniscus to the Son of Mary! What an infinite disproportion there
is between them! Socrates, dying without pain or ignominy, easily
supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy,
had not crowned his life, it might have been doubted whether Socrates,
with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He
invented, it is said, the theory of morals. Others, however, had
before put them in practice; he had only to say what they had done,
and reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been _just_
before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas gave up his life for his
country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans
were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; before he
had even defined virtue Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where
could Jesus learn, among his compatriots, that pure and sublime
morality of which he only has given us both precept and example? The
greatest wisdom was made known amidst the most bigoted fanaticism, and
the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest
people on the earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing
with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for;
that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused,
insulted, cursed by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be
feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed indeed the
weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of
excruciating tortures, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if
the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death
of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a
mere fiction? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction; on
the contrary, the history of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt,
is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition,
in fact, only shifts the difficulty without removing it; it is more
inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a
history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The
Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the
morality contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so
striking and inimitable that the inventor would be a more astonishing
character than the hero.

So far in eloquent ascription of incomparable excellence to the Bible and to the Founder of Christianity. But then immediately Rousseau's Curate proceeds:--

And yet, with all this, the same Gospel abounds with incredible
relations, with circumstances repugnant to reason, and which it is
impossible for a man of sense either to conceive or admit.

The compliment to Christianity almost convinces you--until suddenly you are apprised that the author of the compliment was not convinced himself!

Jean Jacques Rousseau, in the preface to his "Confessions," appealed from the judgment of men to the judgment of God. This judgment it was his habit, to the end of his days, thanks to the effect of his early Genevan education, always to think of as certainly impending. Let us adjourn our final sentence upon him until we hear that Omniscient award.

In pendant to what we have said and have shown of Rousseau, some notice may here properly be given of another celebrated writer, or writer perhaps we should say of a celebrated book, who stands to Rousseau in the relation of sequel and echo. We mean ST. PIERRE, the author of "Paul and Virginia."

This is a very famous little classic. It is a kind of prose idyll, a pastoral of lowly and simple life, a life lived by the subjects of it in the spirit of return to the conditions of nature, such as Jean Jacques Rousseau idealized the conditions of nature to be. The author's own personal experience furnished him the hint, the ground, and the material, of his bucolic romance. It had happened to St. Pierre, in the course of a somewhat fruitless and vagabond life, to be sent in an official capacity to Mauritius, or the Isle of France. In this remote island, as in a kind of Utopia, the scene of the story of "Paul and Virginia" is laid.

St. Pierre was already thirty-one years old when he took his distant voyage; he stayed three years in Mauritius, and then he waited sixteen years, becoming therefore, fifty years old, before he made use of what he had experienced in publishing his romance of "Paul and Virginia." He had meantime seen a great deal of Rousseau during the latter's declining years, and from him had learned that art of writing by virtue of which he was destined to constitute the second of succession in a literary line to be continued after him in Chateaubriand and Lamartine, in Madame de Stael and George Sand.

It is the historical importance thus attaching to St. Pierre's name, even more perhaps than it is the merit and the fame of his books, or of his book--for of his books other than "Paul and Virginia," we need not trouble our readers with even the titles--that warrants us in listing him, as we do, among the select "immortals" of French literature. St. Pierre's distinguishing note was the supposed return to nature and to natural unsophisticated sentiment accomplished in his writings.

But the return, with him, was by no means completely satisfactory. There was always something unreal in St. Pierre's passion for nature; and the feeling with which he wrote seems, to us of to-day, to have been neither very deep nor very sincere. Still, all was accepted and was highly effective in its time; Europe was flooded with tears in reading "Paul and Virginia," much as afterward it was flooded with tears in reading an equally notable, but far less wholesome book, that prose masterpiece of the youthful Goethe, "The Sorrows of Werther." The "Corinne" of Madame de Stael afterward, later the "Jocelyn" of Lamartine, later again the passionate earlier novels of George Sand, served to their respective fresh generations of readers a somewhat similar office, that of stimulating and of expressing the vague longing and aspiration of youth.

The plot of "Paul and Virginia" is simplicity itself. Two young French widows--widows we may euphemistically call the women both, though the mother of Paul had never been married--meet, strangers to each other, in Mauritius, and their children, Paul and Virginia respectively, grow up from babyhood together, as if brother and sister, in a state of nature such as never was anywhere in the world outside of a romance, until at last, Virginia undertaking a vain voyage to France to bring round a rich alienated aunt of her mother's, perishes by shipwreck on her return; in prompt sequel of which calamity, all the remaining personages of the tale, down to the very dog, naturally and sentimentally, one after another, die. The story is represented as told to a traveler in the Isle of France by a sympathetic old man who had been an eye-witness of all.

Two extracts, one from the beginning, and one from the end, of the romance, will sufficiently indicate its quality.

Paul and Virginia being now about twelve years of age, Virginia goes, accompanied by Paul, to restore to the master a runaway female slave to whom he had been cruel, and to intercede with him on the sufferer's behalf. She has accomplished her purpose, and the two have set out to return. They lose their way. This is the state of the case at the point at which our first extract begins, as follows:

"God will have pity on us," replied Virginia; "he listens to the voice
of the little birds which ask him for food." She had scarcely uttered
these words when they heard the noise of water falling from a
neighboring rock. They hastened to it, and, after having quenched
their thirst at this spring clearer than crystal, they gathered and
ate a few cresses which grew on its banks. As they were looking around
them to find some more substantial nourishment, Virginia descried a
young palm-tree among the trees of the wood. The cabbage which is
found at the top of this tree, inclosed within its leaves, is an
excellent food; but although its stalk is not thicker than a man's leg
it was more than sixty feet high. The wood of this tree is indeed
composed only of a collection of filaments; but its internal bark is
so hard that it blunts the sharpest hatchets, and Paul had not even a
knife. He thought of setting fire to this palm-tree at its foot.
Another difficulty--he had no steel to strike fire with, and besides,
in this island so covered with rocks, I do not believe it would be
possible to find a single flint. Necessity inspires industry, and
often the most useful inventions have come from men reduced to
extremity. Paul resolved to light a fire after the manner of the
negroes. With the sharp end of a stone he made a small hole in the
branch of a tree that was very dry, which he placed under his feet; he
then with the edge of the stone made a point to another branch
equally dry, but of a different kind of wood. He next placed the piece
of pointed wood in the small hole of the branch which was under his
feet, and turning it rapidly round in his hands, as one turns a mill
to froth chocolate, he in a few moments perceived smoke and sparks
arise from the point of contact. He collected together dry herbs and
other branches of trees, and set fire to the foot of the palm-tree,
which soon afterward fell with a violent noise. The fire served him
also in stripping the cabbage of the long woody and prickly leaves
which enclosed it. Virginia and he ate a part of this cabbage raw, and
the rest cooked in the ashes, and they found them equally agreeable to
the taste.... After their meal ... an hour of walking brought them to
the banks of a large river, which barred their way.... The noise of
its waters terrified Virginia; she dared not try to ford it. Paul
accordingly took Virginia on his back, and passed thus laden over the
slippery rocks of the river, regardless of the turbulence of the
waters. "Fear not," said he to her; "I feel myself very strong with
you." ... When Paul had passed over, and was on the bank, he wished to
continue his journey laden with his sister, flattering himself that he
could ascend in that manner the mountain of the Three Peaks, which he
saw before him at the distance of half a league; but his strength soon
began to fail, and he was obliged to set her on the ground and to
throw himself down beside her.... Virginia plucked from an old tree,
which hung over the banks of the river, some long leaves of hart's
tongue which hung down from its trunk. She made of these a kind of
buskins with which she bound her feet, which the stones of the way had
caused to bleed, for in her hurry to do good she had forgotten to put
on her shoes. Feeling herself relieved by the freshness of the leaves
she broke off a branch of bamboo and began to walk, leaning with one
hand on the cane and with the other on her brother.

In this manner they walked on slowly through the woods; but the height
of the trees and the thickness of their foliage made them soon lose
sight of the mountain of the Three Peaks, by which they had directed
themselves, and even of the sun, which was already setting. After some
time they quitted, without perceiving it, the beaten path which they
had till then followed, and found themselves in a labyrinth of trees,
shrubs, and rocks, which had no farther outlet. Paul made Virginia sit
down, and ran almost distracted in search of a path out of this thick
wood; but he wearied himself in vain. He climbed to the top of a lofty
tree, to discover at least the mountain of the Three Peaks, but he
could perceive nothing around him but tops of trees, some of which
were illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun. Already the
shadow of the mountains covered the forests in the valleys; the wind
was going down, as is usual at sunset; a profound silence reigned in
these solitudes, and no noise was heard but the cry of the stags who
came to seek repose in these unfrequented recesses. Paul, in the hope
that some hunter might hear him, cried out as loud as he could:
"Come! Come! and help Virginia!" But only the echoes of the forest
answered to his voice and repeated several times successively:
"Virginia! Virginia!"

Paul now descended from the tree, overcome with fatigue and
disappointment; ... he began to weep. Virginia said to him: "Do not
weep, my dear, unless you wish to overwhelm me with grief.... O! I
have been very imprudent." And she began to shed tears. Nevertheless,
she said to Paul, "Let us pray to God, my brother, and he will have
pity on us." Scarcely had they finished their prayer when they heard
the barking of a dog.... "I believe," said Virginia, "it is Fidele,
our house-dog."

Of course all turned out happily. A rescue party had come in search of the estray, and they were soon brought with rejoicing home.

Such as the foregoing passage will have served to show is the charm of unfallen simplicity and innocence represented by St. Pierre to have been cast, forming as if an Eden in the wilderness, about these happy children of nature on whom society had had no chance to exercise its baneful power. True, they suffered, though in Eden. True, others sinned, as well as suffered, about them, for there was slavery and there was cruelty; but that was in the wilderness outside; in Eden they did not sin. It was all Rousseauism in experiment and reduced to absurdity. By Rousseauism we indicate the doctrinal dream of that dreamer; by no means the actual waking practice of the man that dreamed.

It may seem a strange marring of the idea of a sufficiency in nature, let nature but be unhindered by society, to renew the world in the purity of paradise, that the end of the idyll of Paul and Virginia should have come about through an effort on the part of Virginia's mother, made quite in the spirit of the present artificial order of things, to secure a bequest from an aunt of hers in France, whom the niece had offended by marrying as she did; but so it was. Virginia undertakes the necessary voyage, and, as we have already said, perishes by shipwreck on the coast of Mauritius in returning. The heart-rending agony of the final catastrophe we have no space to exhibit. The author seems to hint that Virginia might have been saved, could she have brought herself to assent to the desire of an entreating honest stalwart seaman that she should disembarrass her person of her clothes. It is almost the step taken from the sublime to the ridiculous for the author to make his heroine perish thus as a martyr to her own invincible modesty.

The bereaved mother has visions of her departed daughter's accomplished felicity in the world unseen. These she describes to the neighbor, who, a venerable old man, tells the traveler the tale. Now for the final extract from the text of the book:

"O my worthy neighbor!" said she [Paul's mother] to me [the old man
who tells the whole story]: "I thought last night I beheld Virginia
clothed in white, in the midst of groves and delicious gardens. She
said to me: 'I enjoy the most desirable happiness.' Then she
approached Paul with a smiling air and bore him away with her. As I
endeavored to retain my son I felt that I myself was quitting the
earth, and that I was following him with inexpressible pleasure. I
then wished to bid my friend farewell, when I perceived her following
us with Mary and Domingo. [These are negro slaves of the two mothers.]
But what seems still more strange is, that Madame de la Tour
[Virginia's mother] had the same night a dream attended with similar
circumstances."

I replied to her, "My friend, I believe that nothing happens in the
world without the permission of God. Dreams do sometimes foretell the
truth."

Madame de la Tour related to me that the same night she had also had a
dream entirely similar. I had never observed in these two ladies the
least propensity to superstition; I was therefore struck with the
resemblance of their dreams, and I had no doubt but that they would be
soon realized. This opinion, that truth sometimes presents itself to
us during our sleep, is generally spread among all the nations of the
earth. The most illustrious men of antiquity have entertained it,
amongst others, Alexander, Caesar, the Scipios, the two Catos, and
Brutus, who were by no means inclined to superstition. The Old and the
New Testament supply us with a variety of examples of dreams that have
been realized....

But whether this opinion concerning dreams be true or not, those of my
unfortunate friends were speedily realized. Paul died two months after
the death of his dear Virginia, whose name he incessantly pronounced.
Margaret [Paul's mother] beheld her end approach a week after that of
her son with a joy which virtue only can feel. She bade Madame de la
Tour the most tender farewell, "in the hope," she said, "of a sweet
and eternal reunion. Death is the greatest of all blessings," added
she; "we ought to desire it. If life be a punishment we ought to wish
for its end; if it be a trial, we should wish it short."

The governor took care of Domingo and Mary, who were no longer able to
labor, and who did not long survive their mistresses. As for poor
Fidele, he pined away about the same time as he lost his master.

I conducted Madame de la Tour to my house. She bore up under these
heavy afflictions with an incredible fortitude of mind. She had
comforted Paul and Margaret up to their last moments, as if she had
only their misfortune to support. When she no longer beheld them, she
spoke of them every day as of beloved friends who were in the
neighborhood. She survived them, however, but a month....

The body of Paul was placed by the side of Virginia, at the foot of
the same bamboos; and near the same spot the remains of their tender
mothers and their faithful servants were laid. No marble was raised
over their humble turf, no inscription engraved to celebrate their
virtues; but their memory remains indelible in the hearts of those
whom they have assisted.

If we have treated somewhat lightly this romance of sentimentalism and of naturalism it is because of the taint of ungenuineness--that is, of unreality more or less conscious on the author's part--that we seem to ourselves to discover in its pages. But the masterpiece of Bernardin de St. Pierre is after all a serious literary fact. For instance, if "Paul and Virginia" had never been written it is doubtful if we should ever have had that series of romantico-realistic little pieces of fiction from the pen of George Sand, out of one of which we shall presently exemplify this woman of genius to our readers. A production in literature is to be judged not only by its own inherent quality, but also, perhaps not less by its entail of influence.

"Paul and Virginia," in becoming a school-book for the learning of French, may be said to have bought increase of celebrity at the price of some diminution in fame. In our own opinion, however, which, after all that we have said, hardly needs to be thus expressly stated, the book still remains quite as famous as its intrinsic merits entitle it to be. Its chief security of renown in the future lies, and will continue more and more to lie, in the striking fact of its renown in the past.

We formally part with Rousseau and with his first literary foster-child. But we shall trace their features still, again and again, persisting in authors to follow who could not escape a tell-tale impress, open to all to see, stamped from that singularly fecund, and singularly potent, literary paternity.