The Confessions

  As I drew near to Lausanne, I reflected upon the straits that I was in, and on some way of extricating myself without going to display my distress to my stepmother. And I compared myself, on my pedestrian pilgrimage, with Venture arriving at Annecy. I was so fired by this idea that without thinking that I had neither his charm nor his talents I took it into my head to play the little Venture at Lausanne, to teach music, of which I was ignorant, and to say that I came from Paris, where I had never been. As there was no choir school there at which I could deputize and, anyhow, I must take good care not to venture among professional musicians, I began on the execution of my fine plan by inquiring for a small inn which was both cheap and comfortable. I was recommended to a certain Perrotet who took in boarders. This Perrotet turned out to be the best fellow in the world, and gave me a very hearty welcome. I told him my little lies in the form that I had composed them. He promised to speak for me, and to try to get me some pupils, saying that he would not ask me for any money till I had earned some. His charge for board was five silver crowns; which was not a great price, but a great deal for me. He advised me only to take half-board at first, which consisted of a good soup and nothing else for dinner, but a good supper in the evening. I agreed. Poor Perrotet let me have all this on credit with the best will in the world, and spared no pains to be of use to me.

  Why is it that, having found so many good people in my youth, I find so few in my latter years? Has the race died out? I am forced to look for them to-day in a different class from the one I found them in then. Among the people, where great passions only express themselves occasionally, natural feeling makes itself heard more often. In the highest ranks of all it is absolutely stifled, and beneath a mask of feeling it is always self-interest or vanity that speaks.

  From Lausanne I wrote to my father, who sent me my bundle, and also some excellent advice, of which I ought to have made better use. I have already noted certain moments of incomprehensible delirium in which I was not myself. Here is another extreme instance. In order to realize the extent to which I had lost my head, the degree to which I had, so to speak, venturized myself, it is only necessary to see how many extravagant actions I piled one on the other. Here I was a singing master who could not read a tune. For even if I had profited by the six months I spent with Le Maître, they would never have been sufficient. Besides, I had been taught by a master; and that was enough to make me learn badly. Being a Parisian from Geneva, and a Catholic in a Protestant country, I decided that I had better change my name as well as my religion and my country. I always imitated my great model as closely as I could. He had called himself Venture de Villeneuve. So from the name Rousseau I made the anagram Vaussore, and called myself Vaussore de Villeneuve. Venture knew how to compose although he had never said anything about it; I knew nothing about it and boasted of my skill to everybody; and although I could not score the simplest drinking song, I claimed to be a composer. That is not all. Having been introduced to M. de Treytorens, professor of law, who was a music-lover and held concerts at his house, I decided to give him a sample of my talents, and began to compose a piece for his concert with as much boldness as if I had known how to set about it. I had the persistence to work for a fortnight on this fine composition, to make a fair copy of it, write out the parts, and distribute them with as much assurance as if they had been a musical masterpiece. Finally – a fact that will be hard to believe, though it is really true – to crown this sublime production in a fitting manner, I tacked on a pretty minuet, which was sung in all the streets, and which people may still remember, scored for the once well-known words:

  What a caprice!

  What an injustice!

  Can your Clarissa

  Have blabbed of your love! etc.*

  Venture had taught me this air with its bass accompaniment, with different and obscene words by the aid of which I had remembered it. So I tacked this minuet with its bass on to the end of my composition, suppressing the words, and claimed it as my own with as much confidence as if I were addressing the inhabitants of the moon.

  The players assembled to perform my piece. I explained to each the method of timing, the manner of interpretation and the cues for repeats. I made myself extremely busy. The five or six minutes spent in tuning up were five or six centuries to me. At last all was ready. I gave five or six premonitory taps on my conductor’s desk with a handsome roll of paper. Attention! All was quiet. Gravely I began to beat time. They began. No, throughout all the history of French opera never was there heard such a discordant row. Whatever they might have thought of my pretended talents, the effect was worse than anything they seem to have expected. The musicians were choking with laughter; the audience goggled their eyes, and would gladly have stopped their ears; but they had not the means. My wretched orchestra, who were out to amuse themselves, scraped loudly enough to pierce a deaf man’s ear-drums. I had the audacity to go right on, sweating big drops, it is true, but kept there by shame. I had not the courage to bolt and make my escape. For my consolation, I heard the audience around me whisper into one another’s ears, or rather into mine: ‘It’s absolutely unbearable’; or ‘What crazy music!’; or ‘What a devil of a din!’ Poor Jean-Jacques, at that cruel moment you could hardly expect that one day your music would excite murmurs of surprise and applause, when played before the King of France and all his Court, and that in all the boxes around the most charming ladies would say half aloud: ‘What delightful sounds! What enchanting music! Every one of those airs goes straight to the heart!’

  But what put everyone in a good humour was the minuet. No sooner had they played a few bars than I heard peals of laughter from all sides. Everyone congratulated me on my pretty ear for a tune, and assured me that my minuet would earn me a name. They said that I deserved to have it sung everywhere. I have no need to depict my anguish, nor to confess that I deserved it.

  Next day one of my orchestra, Lutold by name, came to see me, and was decent enough to congratulate me on my success. A deep sense of my foolishness, shame, regret, despair at the condition to which I was reduced, and the impossibility of keeping my heart closed in my great distress, made me open it to him. I gave way to my tears, and instead of being content to admit my ignorance to him I told him everything, begging him to keep my secret, which he promised to do. The manner in which he kept it anyone may imagine. That same evening all Lausanne knew who I was; and, what is remarkable, no one showed me that he did, not even my good Perrotet, who, no twith standing, did not give up lodging and feeding me.

  I went on living, but in a melancholy way. The consequences of such a beginning did not make Lausanne a very agreeable place for me to stay in. Pupils did not present themselves in swarms; not a single girl to teach, and no one from the town. I had in all two or three fat ‘Deutschers’, whose stupidity matched my ignorance, who bored me to tears, and who, in my hands, became no great performers. I was summoned to only one house, where a little snake of a girl amused herself by showing me a lot of music of which I could not read a note, and which she had the malice to sing afterwards in front of the music master, to show him how it should be done. I was so little able to read an air at first sight that at that brilliant concert of which I have spoken I was not able to follow the score even for a minute, to find out whether they were really playing the music I had under my eyes and which I had myself composed.

  In the midst of all these humiliations, I found the sweetest of consolation in the news I had from time to time of my two delightful girl friends. I have always found great powers of consolation in the sex; and nothing so lightens my afflictions in misfortune as to feel that some charming creature is concerned for me. This correspondence, however, ended shortly afterwards; but the fault was mine. When I moved on I neglected to give them my address and, being compelled by necessity to think continually of myself, I soon forgot them completely.

  It is a long time since I have mentioned my poor Mamma. But it would be a grave mistake to suppose that I had forgotten her. I did not ce
ase to think of her and to long to find her again, not only because I needed her for my subsistence but because my heart needed her even more. My attachment to her, lively and tender though it was, did not prevent my loving other women – but not in the same way. All alike owed my affection to their charms. But whereas in others their charms were its sole cause, and my affection would not have outlived them, Mamma could have become old and plain without my loving her any less tenderly. My heart had fully transferred to her person the homage it had at first paid to her beauty; and whatever changes she were to undergo, provided that she remained herself my feelings could not change. I am well aware that I owed her a debt of gratitude. But really I did not think of that. Whatever she had done or not done for me, it would still have been the same. I loved her neither out of duty, nor out of interest, nor for motives of convenience. I loved her because I was born to love her. When I fell in love with any other woman it made a distraction, I admit, and I thought of Mamma less often; but I thought of her with the same pleasure, and never, whether I was in love or not, never did I turn my mind to her without thinking that there could be no happiness in life for me so long as I was separated from her.

  Though I had heard nothing from her for so long, I never believed that I had entirely lost her, or that she could have forgotten me. ‘She will learn sooner or later that I am wandering,’ I said to myself, ‘and will show me some sign of life; I shall find her again, I am certain.’ In the meantime it was a delight to me to live in her native country, to walk in the streets through which she had walked, past houses in which she had lived. Yet all this was guesswork. For one of my queer stupidities was that I lacked the courage to inquire about her, or pronounce her name except in case of absolute necessity. It seemed to me that in mentioning her I revealed all that she inspired in me, that my lips betrayed the secret of my heart, and that I compromised her in some way. I think also that mingled with these ideas was some fear that people would speak ill of her. There had been a good deal of talk about the steps she had taken, and some about her general behaviour. So for fear that something might be said that I did not wish to hear, I preferred that she should not be mentioned at all.

  As my pupils did not occupy much of my time, and as the town of her birth was only twelve miles from Lausanne, I made a two or three days’ trip there on foot, during which time I remained in a state of most pleasant emotion. The view of the Lake of Geneva and its lovely shores had always a particular attraction in my eyes, which I cannot explain and which does not depend only on the beauty of the sight, but on something more compelling which moves and stimulates me. Every time I visit the Canton of Vaud, I experience an impression composed of memories of Mme de Warens, who was born there, of my father, who lived there, of Mlle de Vulson who reaped the first fruits of my love, of several expeditions I made in my childhood and of some from another source still more secret and still more powerful than all those. When a burning desire for that mild and happy existence which eludes me and for which I was born, comes to fire my imagination, it is always associated with the Canton of Vaud, with its lake shores and its lovely countryside. I cannot live without an orchard on the shores of that lake, and no other; I must have a constant friend, a charming wife, a cow, and a little boat. I shall not enjoy perfect happiness upon earth until I have all these. I am amused by the simplicity with which I have gone several times to that country solely to seek that imaginary happiness. Each time I have been surprised to find its inhabitants, particularly its women, of an entirely different character from that which I had expected. What an anomaly this seemed to me! The country and the people who inhabit it have never seemed to me to have been made for one another.

  On this trip to Vevay, walking along that lovely shore, I gave myself up to the sweetest of melancholy. My heart darted eagerly after a thousand innocent delights. I indulged my feelings. I sighed and cried like a child. How often I would stop to weep at my leisure and, sitting on a large stone, would be amused to see my tears fall into the water!

  On arriving at Vevay I put up at ‘The Key’, and in the two days that I spent there without seeing anyone I took a liking to the town, which has remained with me on all my journeys, and which finally caused me to make the characters of my novel live there. I would say to all those possessed of taste and feeling: ‘Go to Vevay, explore the countryside, examine the scenery, walk beside the lake, and say whether Nature did not make this lovely land for a Julie, a Claire, and a Saint-Preux. But do not look for them there.’ I return to my history.

  As I was a Catholic and professed myself one, I did not hesitate openly to follow the faith I had embraced. On Sundays when it was fine, I went to mass at Assens, six miles from Lausanne. I usually made this journey with other Catholics, particularly with an embroiderer from Paris whose name I have forgotten. He was not a Parisian of my sort, but a true Parisian from Paris, God’s own arch-Parisian, as good-natured as a man from Champagne. So strong was his love of his city that he never chose to suspect I was not his fellow-citizen, for fear of losing this chance of talking about Paris. M. de Crouzas, the lieutenant-governor, had a gardener who was also from that city. But he was not so good-natured, and considered the honour of his birthplace compromised by anyone daring to claim it as his when he had not the right to. He questioned me with the air of a man certain of catching me out, and then smiled maliciously. Once he asked me what was remarkable about the Marché-Neuf. I answered at random, as may be expected. Now that I have lived twenty years in Paris I should know the city. But if I were asked a similar question to-day, I should be at no less of a loss for an answer. Indeed, my confusion might lead anyone to suppose that I had never been there, so prone is one to rely on deceptive arguments even when confronted with the truth.

  I cannot tell exactly how long I stayed at Lausanne. I have not preserved any very striking recollections of that city. I only know that, finding no means of livelihood there, I went on to Neufchâtel, where I spent the winter. I did better in this latter town. I got some pupils and earned enough to settle with my good friend Perrotet, who had faithfully sen my modest luggage after me, although I was considerably in his debt.

  Insensibly I learned music by teaching it. My life was pleasant enough. A sensible man would have been content with it, but my restless heart demanded something different. On Sundays and other days when I was free, I roamed the country and the woods round about, always wandering, dreaming, and sighing; and once out of the city I did not return till evening. One day, being at Boudry, I went into an inn to dine, and saw there a man with a large beard, in a violet coat of the Greek style, and a fur cap. There was a certain nobility about his air and dress, and he often had difficulty in making himself understood, since he spoke only an almost unintelligible jargon, more like Italian than any other language. I understood nearly everything he said, and I was alone. He could only communicate by signs with the host and the country people. I said a few words to him in Italian, which he understood perfectly; whereupon he got up and came to embrace me with delight. The acquaintance was soon made, and from that moment I served him as interpreter. His dinner was good, mine was worse than middling. He invited me to take a share of his and I accepted without much ceremony. After drinking and chattering we managed to get to know one another, and by the end of the meal we were inseparable. He told me that he was a Greek priest and Archimandrite of Jerusalem, and that he had been commissioned to make a collection in Europe for the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre. He showed me some very fine letters-patent from the Tsarina and the Emperor; he had them from many other sovereigns as well. He was sufficiently pleased with what he had collected up to now. But he had had incredible difficulties in Germany, not understanding a word of German, Latin, or French, and being reduced to his Greek, Turkish, and lingua franca, as his sole resources, which had not procured him much in that country, where he had started off. He proposed that I should accompany him and serve as his secretary and interpreter. Although I had just bought a little violet coat, which was not un
suitable for my employment, I did not look well enough clad for him to think it would be difficult to secure my services, and he was not mistaken. Our agreement was quickly made; I asked for nothing and he promised a great deal. Without security or bond, or knowing anything about him, I submitted myself to his direction, and next day there I was on the way to Jerusalem!

  We began our tour with the Canton of Fribourg, where he did not do very well. His episcopal dignity did not permit him to act as a beggar and collect money from private persons. We presented his commission to the senate, who gave him a small sum. From Fribourg we went to Berne, where we stayed at ‘The Falcon’, then a good inn where one found good company. There were many guests at the table, and they were well served. For a long time I had been living poorly, and badly needed to replenish my strength. Now I had the opportunity and I took advantage of it. My lord Archimandrite was himself a convivial man, who liked to entertain. He was gay and spoke well for those who understood him, being not without knowledge of certain subjects and using his Greek erudition with considerable skill. One day when he was cracking nuts at dessert he cut his finger very deeply; and as the wound bled copiously he showed it to the company, saying: ‘Mirate, signori; questo è sangue Pelasgo’.*