At the first melting of the winter snows they left their dungeon in
Chambéri, and they never missed the earliest song of the nightingale.
Many a joyful day of summer peace remained vivid in Rousseau's memory,
and made a mixed heaven and hell for him long years after in the
stifling dingy Paris street, and the raw and cheerless air of a
Derbyshire winter.[100] "We started early in the morning," he says,
describing one of these simple excursions on the day of St. Lewis, who
was the very unconscious patron saint of Madame de Warens, "together and
alone; I proposed that we should go and ramble about the side of the
valley opposite to our own, which we had not yet visited. We sent our
provisions on before us, for we were to be out all day. We went from
hill to hill and wood to wood, sometimes in the sun and often in the
shade, resting from time to time and forgetting ourselves for whole
hours; chatting about ourselves, our union, our dear lot, and offering
unheard prayers that it might last. All seemed to conspire for the bliss
of this day. Rain had fallen a short time before; there was no dust, and
the little streams were full; a light fresh breeze stirred the leaves,
the air was pure, the horizon without a cloud, and the same serenity
reigned in our own hearts. Our dinner was cooked in a peasant's cottage,
and we shared it with his family. These Savoyards are such good souls!
After dinner we sought shade under some tall trees, where, while I
collected dry sticks for making our coffee, Maman amused herself by
botanising among the bushes, and the expedition ended in transports of
tenderness and effusion."[101] This is one of such days as the soul
turns back to when the misery that stalks after us all has seized it,
and a man is left to the sting and smart of the memory of
irrecoverable things.

He was resolved to bind himself to Madame de Warens with an inalterable
fidelity for all the rest of his days; he would watch over her with all