The Confessions

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Full of expectations of soon seeing my dear Mamma again, I gave my imagination something of a rest, since the real happiness in store for me relieved me from the necessity of having to seek it in dreams. Not only was I to see her again, but near her and through her agency to resume a pleasant way of life as well. For she had found me, so she informed me, an occupation which she hoped would suit me, and which would not take me away from her. I exhausted every possible conjecture as to the nature of this occupation, and it would have taken the gift of prophecy for me to guess right. I had sufficient money to travel in comfort, and Mlle du Châtelet wanted me to hire a horse. I refused, and I was right to do so, since I should have forfeited the pleasure of my last real walk in all my life. For I cannot think of the frequent expeditions I made in the neighbourhood of Motiers, while I lived there, as worthy of that name.

  It is a very strange thing that my imagination never works more delightfully than when my situation is the reverse of delightful, and that, on the other hand, it is never less cheerful than when all is cheerful around me. My poor head can never submit itself to facts. It cannot beautify; it must create. It can depict real objects only more or less as they are, reserving its embellishments for the things of the imagination. If I want to describe the spring it must be in winter; if I want to describe a fine landscape I must be within doors; and as I have said a hundred times, if ever I were confined in the Bastille, there I would draw the picture of liberty. On leaving Lyons I could see none but agreeable prospects; I was as cheerful – and I had cause to be – as I had been the reverse when I set out from Paris. During this journey, however, I enjoyed none of those delicious day-dreams that had accompanied me on my last trip. My heart was light, and that was all. I felt some emotion as I drew nearer to my excellent friend whom I was now to see again. I enjoyed some foretaste of the pleasure of living in her company, but I was not beside myself. I had always expected this; it was as if nothing new had happened. I felt a little anxious about my future employment, as if that had been a matter for much anxiety. My thoughts were calm and peaceful; they were not heavenly or ecstatic. Objects caught my eye. I observed the different landscapes I passed through. I noticed the trees, the houses, and the streams. I deliberated at cross-roads. I was afraid of getting lost, but did not lose myself even once. In a word, I was no longer in the clouds. Sometimes I was where I was, sometimes already at my destination, but never did I soar off into the distance.

  In telling the story of my travels, as in travelling itself, I never know how to stop. My heart throbbed with joy as I drew near to my dear Mamma, but I did not go any the quicker for that. I like to walk at my leisure, and halt when I please. The wandering life is what I like. To journey on foot, unhurried, in fine weather and in fine country, and to have something pleasant to look forward to at my goal, that is of all ways of life the one that suits me best. It is already clear what I mean by fine country. Never does a plain, however beautiful it may be, seem so in my eyes. I need torrents, rocks, firs, dark woods, mountains, steep roads to climb or descend, abysses beside me to make me afraid. I had these pleasures, and I relished them to the full, as I came near to Chambéry. At a place called Chailles, not far from a precipitous mountain wall called the Pas de l’Échelle, there runs boiling through hideous gulfs below the high road – which is cut into the rock – a little river which would appear to have spent thousands of centuries excavating its bed. The road has been edged with a parapet to prevent accidents, and so I was able to gaze into the depths and make myself as giddy as I pleased. For the amusing thing about my taste for precipitous places is that they make my head spin; and I am very fond of this giddy feeling so long as I am in safety. Supporting myself firmly on the parapet, I craned forward and stayed there for hours on end, glancing every now and then at the foam and the blue water, whose roaring came to me amidst the screams of the ravens and birds of prey which flew from rock to rock and from bush to bush, a hundred fathoms below me. At those spots where the slope was fairly smooth, and the bushes thin enough to allow of stones bouncing through, I collected some of the biggest I could carry from a little way off and piled them up on the parapet. Then I threw them down, one after another, and enjoyed watching them roll, rebound, and shiver into a thousand pieces before they reached the bottom of the abyss.

  Nearer to Chambéry, I saw a similar sight, though from an opposite angle. The road passes the foot of the finest waterfall I have seen in all my life. The mountain is so sheer that the water springs away and falls in an arc wide enough for a man to walk between the falls and the rock-face, sometimes without getting damp. But unless one is careful one can easily make a mistake, as I did. For, because of its immense height, the water breaks and falls in a spray; and if one goes a little too near without at first noticing that one is getting wet, one is soaked in a moment.

  Finally I arrived, and saw her. She was not alone. The Intendant General was with her at the time I came in. Without a word, she took me by the hand and introduced me to him with that graciousness that opened all hearts to her: ‘Here he is, sir, the poor young man. If you will only protect him for so long as he deserves, I shall have no further anxiety about him for the rest of his life.’ Then, turning to me, she said: ‘My child, you are in the King’s service. Thank Monsieur l’Intendant. He offers you a livelihood.’ I opened my eyes wide but said nothing, having no idea what to think. My budding ambition was within an inch of turning my head; already I saw myself a young Intendant. My fortune proved less brilliant than such preliminaries made me imagine. But, for the present, I had enough to live on, and that for me was plenty. This was how things stood.

  Judging by the issue of the wars and by the condition of his ancient patrimony that one day it would slip from his hands, King Victor Amadeus* had done his best to exhaust it prematurely. A few years before, having resolved to tax the nobility, he had ordered a general land register of the whole country so that the tax might be distributed the more fairly when it was imposed. This task which he had begun was completed by his son. Two or three hundred men, some of them surveyors who were called geometricians, and some of them writers, whom they called secretaries, were employed on this project, and it is in the latter class that Mamma had found me a post. The place, without being very lucrative, gave me enough to live in comfort, in that country. The trouble was that the employment was only temporary. But it put me in the position to wait and look round, and Mamma had deliberately gone out to gain me the Intendant’s special protection, so that I might be transferred to some more stable employment when this job was finished.

  I took up my duties a few days after my arrival. There was nothing difficult about the work, and I soon became familiar with it. So it was that after four or five years of vagabondage, follies, and hardships, I began to make an honest living for the first time since I left Geneva.

  These long details of my early youth may well seem extremely childish, and I am sorry for it. Although in certain respects I have been a man since birth, I was for a long time, and still am, a child in many others. I never promised to present the public with a great personage. I promised to depict myself as I am; and to know me in my latter years it is necessary to have known me well in my youth. As objects generally make less impression on me than does the memory of them, and as all my ideas take pictorial form, the first features to engrave themselves on my mind have remained there, and such as have subsequently imprinted themselves have combined with these rather than obliterated them. There is a certain sequence of impressions and ideas which modify those that follow them, and it is necessary to know the original set before passing any judgements. I endeavour in all cases to explain the prime causes, in order to convey the interrelation of results. I should like in some way to make my soul transparent to the reader’s eye, and for that purpose I am trying to present it from all points of view, to show it in all lights, and to contrive that none of its movements shall escape his notice, so that he may judge for himself of the principle which has produced them.
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br />   If I made myself responsible for the result and said to him, ‘Such is my character’, he might suppose, if not that I am deceiving him, at least that I am deceiving myself. But by relating to him in simple detail all that has happened to me, all that I have done, all that I have felt, I cannot lead him into error, unless wilfully; and even if I wish to, I shall not easily succeed by this method. His task is to assemble these elements and to assess the being who is made up of them. The summing-up must be his, and if he comes to wrong conclusions, the fault will be of his own making. But, with this in view, it is not enough for my story to be truthful, it must be detailed as well. It is not for me to judge of the relative importance of events; I must relate them all, and leave the selection to him. That is the task to which I have devoted myself up to this point with all my courage, and I shall not relax in the sequel. But memories of middle age are always less sharp than those of early youth. So I have begun by making the best possible use of the former. If the latter come back to me in the same strength, impatient readers will perhaps be bored, but I shall not be displeased with my labours. I have only one thing to fear in this enterprise; not that I may say too much or tell untruths, but that I may not tell everything and may conceal the truth.

  BOOK FIVE

  1732–1738 It was, I think, in 1732* that I arrived at Chambéry, in the way that I have described, and started my employment as a surveyor in the King’s service. I was more than twenty, almost twenty-one. I was fairly well formed for my age on the intellectual side, but my judgement was hardly shaped, and I sorely needed the instruction of those into whose hands I fell, in the art of correct behaviour. For some years of experience had not yet radically cured me of my romantic visions, and notwithstanding all my sufferings I knew as little of the world and mankind as if I had not already paid dearly for lessons.

  I lived at home, that is to say at Mamma’s; but not in such a room as at Annecy. No more garden, or stream, or country view. The house she lived in was dark and melancholy, and my room was the darkest and most melancholy in the whole house. A wall for view, a blind alley instead of a street, little air, little light, little space, crickets, rats, and rotten boards; all this made no pleasant habitation. But I was in Mamma’s house, close beside her. Continuously at my desk or in her room, I did not notice the ugliness of mine; I had not time to think of it. It will seem strange that she had settled at Chambéry for the express purpose of living in this ugly house. That was a stroke of cleverness on her part that I must not pass over in silence. She very much disliked the idea of going to Turin, being conscious that after the recent revolutions and in the disturbed state of the Court this was not the moment to present herself. Her affairs, however, required her to put in an appearance. She was afraid that she might be forgotten or slandered, especially as she knew that the Count de Saint-Laurent, Intendant General of Finances, did not view her with favour. He owned an old, badly built house at Chambéry, so poorly situated that it always remained empty. This she rented and moved into. The plan succeeded better than a journey to Turin. Her pension was not withdrawn, and from that time onward the Count de Saint-Laurent was always one of her friends.

  I found her household constituted more or less as before, and her faithful Claude Anet still with her. He was, as I think I have said, a peasant from Moutru, who in his youth used to gather herbs in the Jura to make Swiss tea. She had taken him into her service on account of his skill in drugs, finding it convenient to have a herbalist as her lackey. He had such a passion for the study of plants, and she so encouraged his interest, that he became a true botanist and, if he had not died young, would have made as good a name as a scientist as he deserved for being an honest man. Since he was serious, even solemn, and I was younger than he, he became a sort of guardian to me, and kept me from many stupidities. For he inspired me with respect, and I did not venture to forget myself in front of him. He had the same effect upon his mistress, for she knew his good sense, his uprightness, and his devotion to her, and returned the last in kind. Claude Anet was undoubtedly a rare man, and the only one of his kind I have ever met. Slow, sedate, thoughtful, circumspect in his behaviour, cold in his manner, laconic and sententious in his conversation, he was in his passions the prey to an impetuosity which he never showed, though it consumed him inwardly, and which had caused him to commit only one foolish act in his life, but that a terrible one; he had taken a dose of poison. This tragic business occurred shortly after my arrival, and without it I should never have known of this servant’s intimacy with his mistress. For if she had not told me of it herself I should never have suspected it. Assuredly, if devotion, zeal, and fidelity can deserve such a reward, he had earned it, and he certainly proved himself worthy of it, for he never abused it. They seldom had disputes, and made them up when they did. But there was one quarrel which did not end amicably. His mistress made an insulting remark that he could not swallow. He took counsel with his despair and, finding a bottle of laudanum at hand, swallowed it. Then he went quickly to bed, expecting never to wake again. Fortunately Mme de Warens was disturbed and excited herself, and while wandering through the house found the empty bottle and guessed the rest. With a shriek she rushed to his assistance, and her noise brought me to the scene. She confessed, begged me to help her, and, with great difficulty, managed to make him bring up the opium. As I witnessed this scene, I marvelled at my stupidity in not having in the least suspected the relationship which she now told me of. But Claude Anet was so circumspect that sharper eyes than mine might have been deceived. Their reconciliation was such that I was deeply affected myself; and from that time onwards I respected him as well as esteeming him, and became in some sense his pupil; nor was I the worse for his instruction.

  It gave me some pain to learn that someone lived in even greater intimacy with her than I did. I had not even dreamed of desiring his place for myself; but I very naturally found it hard to see it filled by another. But instead of taking a dislike for the man who had stolen her from me I actually felt the affection I had for her extending to him. Above all, I wanted her to be happy, and since she needed him in order to be so, I was glad that he was happy too. For his part, he completely shared his mistress’s views, and conceived a sincere friendship for the friend she had chosen. Without assuming the authority over me to which his position entitled him, he naturally exercised the superiority which his intelligence gave him over mine. I dared not do anything of which he seemed to disapprove, and he only disapproved of what was wrong. So we lived in an alliance which brought us all happiness, and which only death was strong enough to dissolve. One of the proofs of that delightful woman’s excellent character is that all who loved her loved one another. Jealousy, and even rivalry, gave place to the dominant feeling which she inspired, and I have never known any one of those around her ill-disposed towards any other. Let my readers pause in their reading for a moment at this tribute, and if on reflection they can find any other woman of whom they can say the same, let them attach themselves to her if they would live in peace – even if in other ways her morals are of the worst.

  Here begins a period of eight or nine years, between my arrival at Chambéry and my departure for Paris in 1741, during which time I shall have few events to describe, because my life was as simple as it was pleasant. And this uniformity was just what I needed most to complete the formation of my character, which continual troubles had prevented from taking firm shape. It is during this precious period that my miscellaneous and inconsequent education achieved some consistency and made me what I have never ceased to be amidst all the storms that awaited me. My progress was insensible and slow, and marked by few memorable events. Nevertheless it deserves to be followed and described.

  At the beginning I hardly had any occupation except my work; the cares of the office did not allow me to think of anything else. The little free time I had I spent with my dear Mamma, and having no leisure to read I did not feel any inclination to do so. But when my duties had become a kind of routine, and occupied my th
oughts less, they began to become restless once more. Reading was again a necessity to me. This passion always seemed to grow more acute when it was most difficult to yield to it, and it might have become as over-whelming then as during my apprenticeship if other inclinations had not interfered and made a diversion.

  Although our calculations did not require any very marvellous arithmetic, they sometimes demanded enough to cause me trouble. To get over my difficulties I bought some arithmetic books, and learned the subject well, for I learned it alone. Practical arithmetic entails more than one might think, if one aims at complete accuracy. There are computations of extraordinary length in the midst of which I have sometimes seen good geometricians go wrong. Reflection and practice together clarify one’s ideas, and one finds shortened methods, the invention of which flatters one’s self-esteem, and the accuracy of which satisfies one’s mind; these make a pleasure of a task thankless in itself. I applied myself to arithmetic so thoroughly that no problem soluble by figures alone gave me any difficulty; and now that all I have ever known fades day by day from my memory, this accomplishment still partially remains, even after thirty years of disuse. Only a few days ago, on a visit I made to Davenport, being present at an arithmetic lesson given to my host’s children, I had the incredible pleasure of doing a most complicated sum without a mistake; and as I put down the figures I imagined myself still at Chambéry, in my happy days. But they were far, far away.