had more liberal vent
among these orchard gardens."[47] Madame de Warens was the semi-divine
figure who made the scene live, and gave it perfect and harmonious
accent. He had neither transports nor desires by her side, but existed
in a state of ravishing calm, enjoying without knowing what. "I could
have passed my whole life and eternity itself in this way, without an
instant of weariness. She is the only person with whom I never felt that
dryness in conversation, which turns the duty of keeping it up into a
torment. Our intercourse was not so much conversation as an
inexhaustible stream of chatter, which never came to an end until it was
interrupted from without. I only felt all the force of my attachment for
her when she was out of my sight. So long as I could see her I was
merely happy and satisfied, but my disquiet in her absence went so far
as to be painful. I shall never forget how one holiday, while she was at
vespers, I went for a walk outside the town, my heart full of her image
and of an eager desire to pass all my days by her side. I had sense
enough to see that for the present this was impossible, and that the
bliss which I relished so keenly must be brief. This gave to my musing a
sadness which was free from everything sombre, and which was moderated
by pleasing hope. The sound of the bells, which has always moved me to a
singular degree, the singing of the birds, the glory of the weather, the
sweetness of the landscape, the scattered rustic dwellings in which my
imagination placed our common home;--all this so struck me with a vivid,
tender, sad, and touching impression that I saw myself as in an ecstasy
transported into the happy time and the happy place where my heart,
possessed of all the felicity that could bring it delight, without even
dreaming of the pleasures of sense, should share joys
inexpressible."[48]

There was still, however, a space to be bridged between the doubtful now
and this delicious future. The harshness of circumstance is ever
interposing with a money question, and for a vagrant of eighteen the
first of all problems is a problem of economics. Rousseau was submitted
to the observation of a kinsman of Madame de Warens,[49] and his verdict
corresponded with that of the notary of Geneva, with whom years before
Rousseau had first tried the critical art of making a living. He
pronounced that in spite of an animated expression, the lad was, if not
thoroughly inept, at least of very slende