bliss which I relished so keenly must be brief. This gave to my musing a
sadness which was free from everything sombre, and which was moderated
by pleasing hope. The sound of the bells, which has always moved me to a
singular degree, the singing of the birds, the glory of the weather, the
sweetness of the landscape, the scattered rustic dwellings in which my
imagination placed our common home;--all this so struck me with a vivid,
tender, sad, and touching impression that I saw myself as in an ecstasy
transported into the happy time and the happy place where my heart,
possessed of all the felicity that could bring it delight, without even
dreaming of the pleasures of sense, should share joys
inexpressible."[48]

There was still, however, a space to be bridged between the doubtful now
and this delicious future. The harshness of circumstance is ever
interposing with a money question, and for a vagrant of eighteen the
first of all problems is a problem of economics. Rousseau was submitted
to the observation of a kinsman of Madame de Warens,[49] and his verdict
corresponded with that of the notary of Geneva, with whom years before
Rousseau had first tried the critical art of making a living. He
pronounced that in spite of an animated expression, the lad was, if not
thoroughly inept, at least of very slender intelligence, without ideas,
almost without attainments, very narrow indeed in all respects, and that
the honour of one day becoming a village priest was the highest piece of
fortune to which he had any right to aspire.[50] So he was sent to the
seminary, to learn Latin enough for the priestly offices. He began by
conceiving a deadly antipathy to his instructor, whose appearance
happened to be displeasing to him. A second was found,[51] and the
patient and obliging temper, the affectionate and sympathetic manner of
his new teacher made a great impression on the pupil, though the
progress in intellectual acquirement was as unsatisfactory in one case