sensuous temperament, strangely compounded with Genevese austerity; an
ardent and fantastic imagination, incongruously shot with threads of
firm reason; too little conscience and too much; a monstrous and
diseased love of self, intertwined with a sincere compassion and keen
interest for the great fellowship of his brothers; a wild dreaming of
dreams that were made to look like sanity by the close and specious
connection between conclusions and premisses, though the premisses
happened to have the fault of being profoundly unreal:--this was the
type of character that lay unfolded in the youth who, towards the autumn
of 1729, reached Annecy, penniless and ragged, throwing himself once
more on the charity of the patroness who had given him shelter eighteen
months before. Few figures in the world at that time were less likely to
conciliate the favour or excite the interest of an observer, who had not
studied the hidden convolutions of human character deeply enough to know
that a boy of eighteen may be sly, sensual, restless, dreamy, and yet
have it in him to say things one day which may help to plunge a world
into conflagration.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Here is the line:--

Didier Rousseau. | Jean | ----------------------- | | David. Noah. | |
Isaac (b. 1680-5, d. 1745-7). Jean François. | | | -------------- | |
| JEAN JACQUES. Jean. Theodore.

(_Musset-Pathay_, ii. 283.)

[2] Picot's _Hist. de Genève_, iii. 114.