French Classics

by William Cleaver Wilkinson

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 Saône, 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: