nor his assiduity availed, and he could learn nothing, not
even music. His teacher, one Le Maitre, belonged to that great class of
irregular and disorderly natures with which Rousseau's destiny, in the
shape of an irregular and disorderly temperament of his own, so
constantly brought him into contact. Le Maitre could not work without
the inspiration of the wine cup, and thus his passion for his art landed
him a sot. He took offence at a slight put upon him by the precentor of
the cathedral of which he was choir-master, and left Annecy in a furtive
manner along with Rousseau, whom the too comprehensive solicitude of
Madame de Warens despatched to bear him company. They went together as
far as Lyons; here the unfortunate musician happened to fall into an
epileptic fit in the street. Rousseau called for help, informed the
crowd of the poor man's hotel, and then seizing a moment when no one was
thinking about him, turned the street corner and finally disappeared,
the musician being thus "abandoned by the only friend on whom he had a
right to count."[55] It thus appears that a man maybe exquisitely moved
by the sound of bells, the song of birds, the fairness of smiling
gardens, and yet be capable all the time without a qualm of misgiving of
leaving a friend senseless in the road in a strange place. It has ceased
to be wonderful how many ugly and cruel actions are done by people with
an extraordinary sense of the beauty and beneficence of nature. At the
moment Rousseau only thought of getting back to Annecy and Madame de
Warens. "It is not," he says in words of profound warning, which many
men have verified in those two or three hours before the tardy dawn that
swell into huge purgatorial aeons,--"it is not when we have just done a
bad action, that it torments us; it is when we recall it long after, for
the memory of it can never be thrust out."[56]

II.

When he made his way homewards again, he found to his surprise and
dismay that his benefactress had left Annecy, and had gone for an
indefinite time to Paris. He never knew the secret of this sudden
departure, for no man, he says, was ever so little curious as to the
private affairs of his friends. His heart, completely occupied with the
present, filled its whole capacity and entire space with that, and
except for past pleasures no empty corner was ever left for what was
done with.[57] He says he was too young to take the desertion deeply to
heart. Where he found subsiste