ON HEARING these singular words spoken by a man whom he did not know, Rousseau, trembling and unhappy, plunged into the crowd; and without remembering that he was old and naturally timid, elbowed his way through it. He soon reached the bridge of Notre-Dame; then, still plunged in his reverie, and muttering to himself, he crossed the quarter of La Greve, which was the shortest way to his own dwelling.
“So,” said he to himself, “this secret, which the initiated guard at the peril of their lives, is in possession of the first comer. This is what mysterious associations gam by passing through the popular sieve. A man recognizes me, who knows that I shall be his associate, perhaps his accomplice, yonder. Such a state of things is absurd and intolerable.”
And, while he spoke, Rousseau walked forward quickly—he, usually so cautious, especially since his accident in the Rue Menil-Montant.
“Thus,” continued the philosopher, “I must wish, forsooth, to sound to the bottom these plans of human regeneration which some spirits who boast of the title of 'illuminati' propose to carry out. I was foolish enough to imagine that any good ideas could come from Germany—that land of beer and fog—and may have compromised my name by joining it to those of fools or plotters, whom it will serve as a cloak to shelter their folly. Oh, no! it shall not be thus. No; a flash of lightning has shown me the abyss, and I will not cheerfully throw myself ml o it.”
And Rousseau paused to take breath, resting upon his cane, and standing motionless for a moment.
“Yet it was a beautiful chimera,” pursued the philosopher. “Liberty in the midst of slavery—the future conquered without noise and struggle —the snare mysteriously woven while earth's tyrants slept. It was too beautiful! I was a fool to believe it! I will not be the sport of fears, of suspicions, of shadows, which are unworthy of a free spirit and an independent body.”
He had got thus far, and was continuing his progress, when the sight of some of M. de Sartines' agents gazing round with their ubiquitous eyes frightened the free spirit, and gave such an impulse to the independent body, that it plunged into the deepest shadows of the pillars under which it was walking.
From these pillars it was not far to the Rue Platriere. Rousseau accomplished the distance with the speed of lightning, ascended the stairs to his domicile —breathing like a stag pursued by the hunters—and sank upon a chair, unable to utter a word in answer to all Therese's questions.
At last he recovered sufficiently to account for his emotion; it was the walk, the heat, the news of the king's angry remarks at the bed of justice, the commotion caused by the popular terror—a sort of panic, in short, which had spread among all who witnessed what had happened.
Therese grumblingly replied that all that was no reason for allowing the dinner to cool; and, moreover, that a man ought not to be such a soft chickenhearted wretch as to be frightened at the least noise.
Rousseau could make no reply to this last argument, which he himself had so frequently stated in other terms.
Therese added, that these philosophers, these imaginative people, were all the same; that they always talked very grandly in their writings; they said that they feared nothing; that God and man were very little to them; but, at the slightest barking of the smallest poodle, they cried, “Help!”—at the least feverishness they exclaimed, “Oh, heavens! I am dead.”
This was one of Therese's favorite themes, that which most excited her eloquence, and to which Rousseau, who was naturally timid, found it most difficult to reply. Rousseau, therefore, pursued his own thoughts to the sound of this discordant music—thoughts which were certainly well worth Therese's, notwithstanding the abuse the latter showered so plentifully on him.
“Happiness,” said he, “is composed of perfume and music; now, noise and odor are conventional things. Who can prove that the onion smells less sweet than the rose, or the peacock sings less melodiously than the nightingale?”
After which axiom, which might pass for an excellent paradox, they sat down to table.
After dinner, Rousseau did not, as usual, sit down to his harpsichord. He paced up and down the apartment, and stopped a hundred times to look out of the window, apparently studying the physiognomy of the Rue Platriere. Therese was forthwith seized with one of those fits of jealousy which peevish people—that is to say, the least really jealous people in the world—often indulge in for the sake of opposition. For if there is a disagreeable affectation in the world, it is the affectation of a fault, the affectation of virtue may be tolerated.
Therese, who held Rousseau's age, complexion, mind, and manners in the utmost contempt—who thought him old, sickly, and ugly—did not fear that any one should run off with her husband; she never dreamed that other women might look upon him with different eyes from herself. But as the torture of jealousy is woman's most dainty punishment, Therese sometimes indulged herself in this treat. Seeing Rousseau, therefore, approach the window so frequently, and observing his dreaming and restless air, she said:
“Very good! I understand your agitation—you have just left some one.”
Rousseau turned to her with a startled look which served as an additional proof of the truth of her suspicions.
“Some one you wish to see again.” she continued.
“What do you say?” asked Rousseau.
“Yes, we make assignations, it seems!”
“Oh!” said Rousseau, comprehending that Therese was jealous; “an assignation! You are mad, Therese!”
“I know perfectly well that it would be madness in you,” said she; “but you are capable of any folly. Go—go, with your papier-mache complexion, your palpitations, and your coughs—go, and make conquests. It is one way of getting on in the world!”
“But, Therese, you know there is not a word of truth in what you are saying,” said Rousseau, angrily; “let me think in peace.”
“You are a libertine,” said Therese, with the utmost seriousness.
Rousseau reddened as if she had hit the truth, or as if he had received a compliment.
Therese forthwith thought herself justified in putting on a terrible countenance, turning the whole household upside down, slamming the doors violently, and playing with Rousseau's tranquillity, as children with those metal rings which they shut up in a box and shake to make a noise. Rousseau took refuge in his closet; this uproar had rather confused his ideas.
He reflected that there would doubtless be some danger in not being present at the mysterious ceremony of which the stranger had spoken at the corner of the Quai.
“If there are punishments for traitors, there will also be punishments for the lukewarm or careless,” thought he. “Now I have always remarked that great dangers mean in reality nothing, just like loud threats. The cases in which either are productive of any result are extremely rare; but petty revenges, underhand attacks, mystifications, and other such small coin—these we must be on our guard against. Some day the masonic brothers may repay my contempt by stretching a string across my staircase; I shall stumble over it and break a leg or the six or eight teeth I have left. Or else they will have a stone ready to fall upon my head when I am passing under a scaffolding; or, better still, there may be some pamphleteer belonging to the fraternity, living quite near me, upon the same floor perhaps, looking from his windows into my room. That is not impossible, since the reunions take place even in the Rue Platriere. Well, this wretch will write stupid lampoons on me, which will make me ridiculous all over Paris. Have I not enemies every where?”
A moment afterward, Rousseau's thoughts took a different turn.
“Well,” said he to himself, “but where is courage? where is honor? Shall I be afraid of myself! Shall I see in my glass only the face of a coward—a, slave? No, it shall not be so. If the whole world should combine to ruin me—if the very street should fall upon me—I will go. What pitiable reasoning does fear produce! Since I met this man, I have been continually turning in a circle of absurdities. I doubt every one, and even myself! That is not logical—I know myself, I am not an enthusiast; if I thought I saw wonders in this projected association, it is because there are wonders in it.
Who will say I may not be the regenerator of the human race, I, who am sought after. I, whom on the faith of my writings the mysterious agents of an unlimited power have eagerly consulted? Shall I retreat when the time has come to follow up my work, to substitute practice for theory?”
“What can be more beautiful! Ages roll on; the people rise out of their brutishness; step follows step into the darkness, hand follows hand into the shadows; the immense pyramid is raised, upon the summit of which, as its crowning glory, future ages shall place the bust of Rousseau, citizen of Geneva, who risked his liberty, his life, that he might act as he had spoken—that he might be faithful to his motto; 'Vitam impendere vero.'”
Thereupon Rousseau, in a fit of enthusiasm, seated himself at his harpsichord, and exalted his imagination by the loudest, the most sonorous, and the most warlike melodies he could call forth from its sounding cavity.
Night closed in. Therese, wearied with her vain endeavors to torment her captive, had fallen asleep upon her chair. Rousseau, with beating heart, took his new coat, as if to go out on a pleasure excursion, glanced for a moment in the glass at the play of his black eyes, and was charmed to find that they were sparkling and expressive.
He grasped his knotted stick in his hand, and slipped out of the room without awakening Therese. But when he arrived at the foot of the stairs, and had drawn back the bolt of the street-door, Rousseau paused and looked out, to assure himself as to the state of the locality.
No carriage was passing; the street, as usual, was full of idlers gazing at each other, as they do at this day, while many stopped at the shop windows to ogle the pretty girls. A new-comer would therefore be quite unnoticed in such a crowd. Rousseau plunged into it; he had not far to go. A ballad-singer, with a cracked violin, was stationed before the door which had been pointed out to him. This music, to which every true Parisian's ear is extremely sensitive, filled the street with echoes which repeated the last bars of the air sung by the violin or by the singer himself. Nothing could be more unfavorable, therefore, to the free passage along the street than the crowd gathered at this spot, and the passers-by were obliged to turn either to the right or left of the group. Those who turned to the left took the center of the street, those to the right brushed along the side of the house indicated, and vice versa.
Rousseau remarked that several of these passers-by disappeared on the way as if they had fallen into some trap. He concluded that these people had come with the same purpose as himself, and determined to imitate their maneuver. It was not difficult to accomplish. Having stationed himself in the rear of the assembly of listeners, as if to join their number, he watched the first person whom he saw entering the open alloy, more timid than they, probably because he had more to risk, he waited until a particularly favorable opportunity should present itself.
He did not wait long. A cabriolet which drove along the street divided the circle, and caused the two hemispheres to fall back upon the houses on either side. Rousseau thus found himself driven to the very entrance of the passage; he had only to walk on. Our philosopher observed that all the idlers were looking at the cabriolet and had turned their backs on the house; he took advantage of this circumstance, and disappeared in the dark passage.
After advancing a few steps he perceived a lamp, beneath which a man was seated quietly, like a stall-keeper after the day's business was over, and read, or seemed to read, a newspaper. At the sound of Rousseau's footsteps this man raised his head and visibly placed his finger upon his breast, upon which the lamp threw a strong light. Rousseau replied to this symbolic gesture by raising his finger to his lips.
The man then immediately rose, and, pushing open a door at his right hand, which door was so artificially concealed in the wooden panel of which it formed a part as to be wholly invisible, he showed Rousseau a very steep staircase, winch descended underground. Rousseau entered, and the door closed quickly but noiselessly after him.
The philosopher descended the steps slowly, assisted by his cane. He thought it rather disrespectful that the brothers should cause him, at this, his first interview, to run the risk of breaking his neck or his legs. But the stair, if steep, was not long. Rousseau counted seventeen steps, and then felt as if suddenly plunged into a highly-heated atmosphere.
This moist heat proceeded from the breath of a considerable number of men who were assembled in the low hall. Rousseau remarked that the walls were tapestried with red and white drapery, on which figures of various implements of labor, rather symbolic doubtless than real, were depicted. A single lamp hung from the vaulted ceiling, and threw a gloomy light upon the faces of those present, who were conversing with each other on the wooden benches, and who wore the appearance of honest and respectable citizens.
The floor was neither polished nor carpeted, but was covered with a thick mat of plaited rushes, which deadened the sound of the footsteps. Rousseau's entrance, therefore, produced no sensation. No one seemed to have remarked it.
Five minutes previously Rousseau had longed for nothing so much as such an entrance; and yet, when he had entered, he felt annoyed that he had succeeded so well. He saw an unoccupied place on one of the back benches, and installed himself as modestly as possible on this seat, behind all the others.
He counted thirty-three heads in the assembly. A desk, placed upon a platform, seemed to wait for a president.
