, as
soon as a man has had the misfortune to make himself a name, he becomes
public property. Every one rakes into his life, relates his most trivial
actions, and insults his feelings; he becomes like those walls, which
every passer-by may deface with some abusive writing. Perhaps you
will say that I have myself encouraged this curiosity by publishing my
Confessions. But the world forced me to it. They looked into my house
through the blinds, and they slandered me; I have opened the doors and
windows, so that they should at least know me such as I am. Adieu, sir.
Whenever you wish to know the worth of fame, remember that you have seen
Rousseau."

Nine o'clock.--Ah! now I understand my father's story! It contains the
answer to one of the questions I asked myself a week ago. Yes, I now
feel that fame and power are gifts that are dearly bought; and that,
when they dazzle the soul, both are oftenest, as Madame de Stael says,
but 'un deuil eclatant de bonheur!

'Tis better to be lowly born,
And range with humble livers in content,
Than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief,
And wear a golden sorrow.

[Henry VIII., Act II., Scene 3.]

CHAPTER VIII. MISANTHROPY AND REPENTANCE

August 3d, Nine O'clock P.M.

There are days when everything appears gloomy to us; the world, like the
sky, is covered by a dark fog. Nothing seems in its place; we see only
misery, improvidence, and cruelty; the world seems without God, and
given up to all the evils of chance.

Yesterday I was in this unhappy humor. After a long walk in the
faubourgs, I returned home, sad and dispirited.

Everything I had seen seemed to accuse the civilization of which we are
so proud! I had wandered into a little by-street, with which I was not
acquainted, and I found myself suddenly in the middle of those dreadful
abodes where the poor are born, to languish and die. I looked at those
decaying walls, which time has covered with a foul leprosy; those
windows, from which dirty rags hang out to dry; those fetid gutters,
which coil along the fronts of the houses like venomous reptiles! I felt
oppressed with grief, and hastened on.

A little farther on I was stopped by the hearse of a hospital; a dead
man, nailed down in his deal coffin, was going to his last abode,
without funeral pomp or ceremony, and without followers. There was not
here even that last friend of the outcast--the dog, which a painter has