satisfaction how charming the journey had seemed to him, and thought how
far more charming it would be in the society of a comrade of his own age
and taste, without duty, or constraint, or obligation to go or stay
other than as it might please them. "It would be madness to sacrifice
such a piece of good fortune to projects of ambition, which were slow,
difficult, doubtful of execution, and which, even if they should one day
be realised, were not with all their glory worth a quarter of an hour of
true pleasure and freedom in youth."[36]

On these high principles he neglected his duties so recklessly that he
was dismissed from his situation, and he and his comrade began their
homeward wanderings with more than apostolic heedlessness as to what
they should eat or wherewithal they should be clothed. They had a toy
fountain; they hoped that in return for the amusement to be conferred by
this wonder they should receive all that they might need. Their hopes
were not fulfilled. The exhibition of the toy fountain did not excuse
them from their reckoning. Before long it was accidentally broken, and
to their secret satisfaction, for it had lost its novelty. Their naked,
vagrancy was thus undisguised. They made their way by some means or
other across the mountains, and their enjoyment of vagabondage was
undisturbed by any thought of a future. "To understand my delirium at
this moment," Rousseau says, in words which shed much light on darker
parts of his history than fits of vagrancy, "it is necessary to know to
what a degree my heart is subject to get aflame with the smallest
things, and with what force it plunges into the imagination of the
object that attracts it, vain as that object may be. The most grotesque,
the most childish, the maddest schemes come to caress my favourite idea,
and to show me the reasonableness of surrendering myself to it."[37] It
was this deep internal vehemence which distinguished Rousseau all
through his life from the commonplace type of social revolter. A vagrant