een shut up "for two
months," but this is not true even on his own showing.

[31] Madame Basile. _Conf._, ii. 121-135.

[32] _Conf._ ii. ad finem.

[33] _Conf._, ii. 144.

[34] Another version of the story mentioned by Musset-Pathay (i. 7)
makes the object of the theft a diamond, but there is really no
evidence in the matter beyond that given by Rousseau himself.

[35] Bacle, by name.

[36] _Conf._, iii. 168.

[37] _Conf._, iii. 170. A slightly idealised account of the situation
is given in _Emile_, Bk. iv. 125.

CHAPTER III.

SAVOY.

The commonplace theory which the world takes for granted as to the
relations of the sexes, makes the woman ever crave the power and
guidance of her physically stronger mate. Even if this be a true account
of the normal state, there is at any rate a kind of temperament among
the many types of men, in which it seems as if the elements of character
remain mere futile and dispersive particles, until compelled into unity
and organisation by the creative shock of feminine influence. There are
men, famous or obscure, whose lives might be divided into a number of
epochs, each defined and presided over by the influence of a woman. For
the inconstant such a calendar contains many divisions, for the constant
it is brief and simple; for both alike it marks the great decisive
phases through which character has moved.

Rousseau's temperament was deeply marked by this special sort of
susceptibility in one of its least agreeable forms. His sentiment was
neither robustly and courageously animal, nor was it an intellectual
demand for the bright and vivacious sympathies in which women sometimes
excel. It had neither bold virility, nor that sociable energy which
makes close emotional companionship an essential condition of freedom of
faculty and completeness of work. There is a certain close and sickly
air round all his dealings with women and all his feeling for them. We
seem to move not in the star-like radiance of love, nor even in the
fiery flames of lust, but among the humid heats of some unknown abode of
things not wholesome or manly. "I know a sentiment," he writes, "which
is perhaps less impetuous than love, but a thousand times more
delicious, which sometimes is joined to love, and which is very often
apart from it. Nor is this sentiment friendship only; it is more
voluptuous, more tender; I do not believe that any one of the same sex
could be its object; at least I have been a