Rousseau's delight in the spot where Madame de Warens lived at Annecy
was the mark of the new ideal which circumstances were to engender in
him, and after him to spread in many hearts. His room looked over
gardens and a stream, and beyond them stretched a far landscape. "It was
the first time since leaving Bossey that I had green before my windows.
Always shut in by walls, I had nothing under my eye but house-tops and
the dull gray of the streets. How moving and delicious this novelty was
to me! It brightened all the tenderness of my disposition. I counted the
landscape among the kindnesses of my dear benefactress; it seemed as if
she had brought it there expressly for me. I placed myself there in all
peacefulness with her; she was present to me everywhere among the
flowers and the verdure; her charms and those of spring were all mingled
together in my eyes. My heart, which had hitherto been stifled, found
itself more free in this ample space, and my sighs had more liberal vent
among these orchard gardens."[47] Madame de Warens was the semi-divine
figure who made the scene live, and gave it perfect and harmonious
accent. He had neither transports nor desires by her side, but existed
in a state of ravishing calm, enjoying without knowing what. "I could
have passed my whole life and eternity itself in this way, without an
instant of weariness. She is the only person with whom I never felt that
dryness in conversation, which turns the duty of keeping it up into a
torment. Our intercourse was not so much conversation as an
inexhaustible stream of chatter, which never came to an end until it was
interrupted from without. I only felt all the force of my attachment for
her when she was out of my sight. So long as I could see her I was
merely happy and satisfied, but my disquiet in her absence went so far
as to be painful. I shall never forget how one holiday, while she was at
vespers, I went for a walk outside the town, my heart full of her image
and of an eager desire to pass all my days by her side. I had sense
enough to see that for the present this was impossible, and that the