of temperament; and Rousseau, telling the tale of his inmost experience,
unlike the physician and the moralist who love decorous surfaces of
things, did not spare himself nor others a glimpse of the ignominies to
which the body condemns its high tenant, the soul.[12]

The second piece of experience which he acquired at Bossey was the
knowledge of injustice and wrongful suffering as things actual and
existent. Circumstances brought him under suspicion of having broken the
teeth of a comb which did not belong to him. He was innocent, and not
even the most terrible punishment could wring from him an untrue
confession of guilt. The root of his constancy was not in an abhorrence
of falsehood, which is exceptional in youth, and for which he takes no
credit, but in a furious and invincible resentment against the violent
pressure that was unjustly put upon him. "Picture a character, timid and
docile in ordinary life, but ardent, impetuous, indomitable in its
passions; a child always governed by the voice of reason, always treated
with equity, gentleness, and consideration, who had not even the idea of
injustice, and who for the first time experiences an injustice so
terrible, from the very people whom he most cherishes and respects! What
a confusion of ideas, what disorder of sentiments, what revolution in
heart, in brain, in every part of his moral and intellectual being!" He
had not learnt, any more than other children, either to put himself in
the place of his elders, or to consider the strength of the apparent
case against him. All that he felt was the rigour of a frightful
chastisement for an offence of which he was innocent. And the
association of ideas was permanent. "This first sentiment of violence
and injustice has remained so deeply engraved in my soul, that all the
ideas relating to it bring my first emotion back to me; and this
sentiment, though only relative to myself in its origin, has taken such
consistency, and become so disengaged from all personal interest, that