se enough to be ashamed to be very detailed
and psychological in recounting. It was a case of precocious love at
first sight. One could afford to laugh at it as ridiculous, but that it
had a sequel full of sin and of sorrow. Jean Jacques was now forwarded
to Turin, to become inmate of a sort of charity school for the
instruction of catechumens. The very day after he started on foot, his
father, with a friend of his, reached Annecy on horseback, in pursuit
of the truant boy. They might easily have overtaken him, but they let
him go his way. Rousseau explains the case on behalf of his father as
follows:--

My father was not only an honorable man, but a person of the most
reliable probity, and endowed with one of those powerful minds that
perform deeds of loftiest heroism. I may add, he was a good father,
especially to me. Tenderly did he love me, but he loved his
pleasures also; and, since our living apart, other ties had, in a
measure, weakened his paternal affection. He had married again, at
Nyon; and though his wife was no longer of an age to present me
with brothers, yet she had connections; another family-circle was
thus formed, other objects engrossed his attention, and the new
domestic relations no longer so frequently brought back the
remembrance of me. My father was growing old, and had nothing on
which to rely for the support of his declining years. My brother
and I had something coming to us from my mother's fortune; the
interest of this my father was to receive during our absence. This
consideration did not present itself to him directly, nor did it
stand in the way of his doing his duty; it had, however, a silent,
and to himself imperceptible, influence, and at times slackened his
zeal, which, unacted upon by this, would have been carried much
farther. This, I think, was the reason, that, having traced me as
far as Annecy, he did not follow me to Chamberi, where he was
morally certain of overtaking me. This will also explain why, in
visiting him many times after my flight, I received from him on
every occasion a father's kindness, though unaccompanied by any
very pressing efforts to retain me.

Rousseau's filial regard for his father was peculiar. It did not lead
him to hide, it only led him to account for, his father's sordidness.
The son generalized and inferred a moral maxim for the cond