spective avowal is to create
a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is
actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice
brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness,
untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices.
The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering
kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain
sordidness in the scene. You may complain that the details which
Rousseau gives of his youthful days are insipid. Yet such things are the
web and stuff of life, and these days of transition from childhood to
full manhood in every case mark a crisis. These insipidities test the
education of home and family, and they presage definitely what is to
come. The roots of character, good or bad, are shown for this short
space, and they remain unchanged, though most people learn from their
fellows the decent and useful art of covering them over with a little
dust, in the shape of accepted phrases and routine customs and a silence
which is not oblivion.

After a time the character of Jean Jacques was absolutely broken down.
He says little of the blows with which his offences were punished by his
master, but he says enough to enable us to discern that they were
terrible to him. This cowardice, if we choose to give the name to an
overmastering physical horror, at length brought his apprentice days to
an end. He was now in his sixteenth year. He was dragged by his comrades
into sports for which he had little inclination, though he admits that
once engaged in them he displayed an impetuosity that carried him beyond
the others. Such pastimes naturally led them beyond the city walls, and
on two occasions Rousseau found the gates closed on his return. His
master when he presented himself in the morning gave him such greeting
as we may imagine, and held out things beyond imagining as penalty for a
second sin in this kind. The occasion came, as, alas, it nearly always
does. "Half a league from the town," says Rousseau, "I hear the retreat
sounded, and redouble my pace; I hear the drum beat, and run at the top
of my speed: I arrive out of breath, bathed in sweat; my heart beats
violently, I see from a distance the soldiers at their post, and call
out with choking voice. It was too late. Twenty paces from the outpost
sentinel, I saw the first bridge rising. I shuddered, as I watched those
terrible horns, sinister a