My mind being at rest so far as my livelihood was concerned, I felt no other anxiety. Although I abandoned the field of the world to my enemies, I left in the noble enthusiasm which had inspired my writings and in the steadfastness with which I had adhered to my principles a testimony to my qualities of soul, corresponding to that which my whole conduct adduced to my natural qualities. I had no need of any other defence against my calumniators. They could draw another man and give him my name, but they could only deceive those who wished to be deceived. I could leave them my life to criticize from one end to the other, in the certainty that, notwithstanding my faults and weaknesses, notwithstanding my inability to tolerate any yoke, they would always find me a just and good man, free from bitterness, hatred, and jealousy, quick to recognize when I was in the wrong, even quicker to excuse the injustices of others, seeking my happiness always in the gentle emotion of loving, and behaving on all occasions with a sincerity verging upon rashness and with a disinterestedness that was almost past belief.
I was in a manner, therefore, taking leave of my age and my contemporaries and, by confining myself to that island for the rest of my life, was bidding the world farewell. For such was my intention, and it was there that I meant at last to carry out my great scheme for a life of idleness, to which I had hitherto fruitlessly devoted the slight activities which Heaven had allotted me. This island was going to be my Papinamia,* the happy land of sleep.
But one does more than that there, one does nothing.
That more was everything to me, for I have never regretted my sleeplessness. Idleness is enough for me and, provided I do nothing, I prefer to dream waking than sleeping. The age for romantic plans was past. I had found the incense of vainglory stupefying rather than nattering. So the last hope I had left was to live without restraints and eternally at leisure. Such is the life of the blessed in the other world, and henceforth I thought of it as my supreme felicity in this.
Those who reproach me for my many inconsistencies will not fail to reproach me for this one too. I have said that the idleness of society made it unbearable to me; and here I am, seeking for solitude solely in order to give myself up to idleness. However, that is how I am; if there is any contradiction it is of Nature’s making, not mine. But it is such a trifling one that it is the very mark of my consistency. The idleness of society is deadly because it is obligatory; the idleness of solitude is delightful because it is free and voluntary. In company it is a torture to do nothing, because there I am compelled to inaction. I have to stay glued to a chair, or stand at my post like a sentinel, without stirring hand or foot, and without the courage either to run, leap, sing, shout, or wave my arms when I want to. I dare not even dream. I suffer at once all the boredom of idleness and all the torments of constraint, being compelled to pay attention to every silly thing that is said and to every compliment that is paid, and incessantly to tease my brain so as not to lose my turn to bring in a pun or a fib. And you call that idleness! It is the labour of a galley-slave.
The idleness I love is not that of an indolent fellow who stands with folded arms in perfect inactivity, and thinks as little as he acts. It is the idleness of a child who is incessantly on the move without ever doing anything, and at the same time it is the idleness of a rambling old man whose mind wanders while his arms are still. I love to busy myself about trifles, to begin a hundred things and not finish one of them, to come and go as my fancy bids me, to change my plan every moment, to follow a fly in all its circlings, to try and uproot a rock to see what is underneath, eagerly to begin on a ten-years task and to give it up after ten minutes: in short, to fritter away the whole day inconsequentially and incoherently, and to follow nothing but the whim of the moment.
Botany – as I had always considered it and as I still did when it began to become a passion with me – was exactly the kind of idle pursuit to fill the void of my leisure, leaving no room for the wildness of the imagination or for the boredom of total inaction. To wander carelessly through the woods and fields, and mechanically to pluck here and there, sometimes a flower and sometimes a branch, to munch my fodder almost haphazard, to observe the same things thousands and thousands of times and always with the same interest, because I always forgot them each time: that was the way to pass eternity without the possibility of a moment’s boredom. However shapely, however wonderful, however various the structure of plants may be, it never strikes an ignorant eye sufficiently hard to interest it. The constant similarity, and at the same time the prodigious variety, that obtains in their composition only affects those who have some knowledge of the vegetable world. Others, when they look at all these treasures of nature, feel only a stupid and monotonous admiration. They see nothing in its detail, because they do not even know what they ought to look at; and they fail equally to see the whole, because they have no idea of that chain of relations and combinations, which is so marvellous that it overwhelms the observer’s mind. I was, owing to my poor memory, always fated to remain in that happy state of knowing little enough for everything to be fresh to me, and yet quite enough for me to find it intelligible. The different soils that occurred on this island, tiny though it was, offered me a sufficient variety of plants for study and amusement for the rest of my life. I wanted to leave no single blade of grass unclassified, and I was already preparing to compile the Flora Petrinsularis, together with a huge collection of curious observations.
I sent for Thérèse to bring my books and belongings. We boarded with the receiver of the island. His wife had sisters at Nidau who came to visit her by turns, and they were company for Thérèse. Here I had my first experience of a pleasant life in which I could have wished to continue for the rest of my days. But the taste I got for it only served to make me feel more keenly the bitterness of the life which was so quickly to succeed it.
I have always been passionately fond of the water. The sight of it throws me into a delicious dream, although often about no definite subject. On getting up I never failed, if it was fine, to run out to the terrace and breathe in the fresh and healthy morning air, and to let my eyes skim along the horizon of that beautiful lake whose shores and whose skirt of mountains delighted my gaze. I can think of no more fitting homage to the Divinity than the silent wonder aroused by the contemplation of His works, which is not to be expressed by any external acts. I can understand how it is that city-dwellers, who see only walls and streets and crimes, have so little religion. But I cannot understand how those who live in the country, and the solitary especially, can be lacking in faith. How is it that their souls are not raised in ecstasy a hundred-times a day to the Author of the wonders that strike their eyes? In my case, it is especially on rising, exhausted by insomnia, that a long-standing habit induces those uplutings of the heart which require none of the weary effort of thought. But for this, my eyes have to be struck by the ravishing spectacle of Nature. In my room I pray less often and with less fervour; but at the sight of a beautiful landscape I feel moved, though I cannot say by what. I have read of a wise bishop who, on touring his diocese, met an old woman whose sole prayer consisted of the exclamation ‘O!’ ‘Good mother,’ said he, ‘go on praying like that always. Your prayer is better than ours.’ That better prayer is also mine.
After breakfast I hastily and grudgingly wrote a few miserable letters, eagerly longing for the happy moment when I should have no more to write. I would then fidget among my books and papers for a few moments, rather for the purpose of unpacking and arranging them than of reading; and this, which became a Penelope’s task to me, afforded me the pleasure of a few minutes’ idleness, at the end of which I tired of it and left it, to spend the three or four hours of the morning remaining to me in studying botany, and especially the system of Linnaeus, for whom I conceived a passion that I have never been able entirely to throw off, even after discovering its deficiencies. That great observer is, in my opinion, the only man so far, except for Ludwig, who has looked at botany with the eyes of a scientist and a philosopher. But he has stud
ied too much from gardens and collections of dried plants, and not enough from Nature herself. For my part, taking the whole island as my garden, as soon as I needed to make or verify any observation I ran into the woods or the fields with my book under my arm; and there I lay down beside the plant in question to examine it as it grew and at my leisure. This method has greatly assisted me in acquiring a knowledge of plants in their natural state, before they have been cultivated and deformed by the hand of man. It is said that Fagon, Louis XIV’s first physician, who could name and perfectly recognize every plant in the Royal Gardens, was so ignorant in the country that he could not identify anything. I am exactly the opposite; I know something about Nature’s handiwork but nothing about the gardener’s.
In the afternoons I gave myself up entirely to my lazy and nonchalant humour, and unsystematically followed the impulse of the moment. Often when the weather was calm I went off alone immediately on leaving table and, jumping into a little boat that the receiver had taught me to manage with a single oar, rowed out into the open lake. The moment I left the bank I almost leapt for joy. The cause of this I cannot tell, nor can I really understand it, unless it was perhaps some secret self-congratulation at being thus out of reach of the wicked. Then I rowed alone all about the lake, sometimes approaching the shore but never landing. Often, letting my boat drift with the wind and the current, I gave myself up to aimless dreams which, foolish though they were, were none the less delightful. Sometimes I cried out with emotion: ‘O Nature! O my mother! I am here under your sole protection. Here there is no cunning and rascally man to thrust himself between us.’ In this way I would drift almost a Mlle and a half from land; and I could have wished that lake were the ocean. However, to please my poor dog, who was not so fond as I of long afternoons on the water, I generally followed a settled plan. I would go and’land on the little island, walk there for an hour or two; or lie down on top of its grassy hill to glut myself with the joy of gazing on the lake and its surroundings, or to examine and dissect all the grasses within my reach, or to build, like another Robinson Crusoe, an imaginary dwelling on this little isle. I was extremely fond of that hillock. How proud I was to act as pilot and guide when I was able to bring Thérèse with the receiver’s wife and her sisters to take a walk there! We solemnly transported some rabbits to stock the place; which was another red-letter day for Jean-Jacques. This colony made the little island even more interesting to me. I went more often and with greater pleasure after that, to look for signs of the new inhabitants’ progress.
To these amusements I added another, which recalled the delightful life at Les Charmettes, and which was most suitable to the season. This was assisting in the country labours of bringing in the vegetables and fruit, a job in which Thérèse and I were delighted to take our share with the receiver’s wife and her family. I remember that when a M. Kirchberger from Berne came to see me he found me perched in a large tree with a sack tied to my waist, and already so loaded with apples that I could not move. I was not at all sorry that he and others should find me thus employed. I hoped that when the Bernese saw how I spent my leisure they would no longer think of troubling my quiet life and would leave me at peace in my solitude. I should have preferred to be confined to my island by their will than by my own. For then I should have been more certain of not having my rest disturbed.
Here is one more of these confessions which I am certain in advance will meet with the incredulity of those readers who always persist in judging me by their own standards, although they cannot have helped seeing, throughout the course of my life, countless inner emotions of mine utterly unlike their own. The most extraordinary thing is that while denying me all those feelings, good or indifferent, wliich they do not themselves possess, they are always ready to attribute others to me so wicked that they could not even enter into a man’s heart. They find it quite simple to make me out as an exception to Nature’s laws, and to depict me as such a monster as cannot possibly even exist. Nothing seems too absurd for them to believe so long as it tends to blacken my character; nothing at all out of the way seems to them possible if it redounds to my honour.
But whatever they may think or say, I shall continue just the same faithfully to reveal what J.-J. Rousseau was, did, and thought, without explaining or justifying the strangeness of his feelings or ideas, or inquiring whether any others have thought like him. I took such a fancy to the Island of Saint-Pierre, and living on it suited me so well, that by dint of concentrating all my desires within that island, I conceived the further desire of never leaving it. The visits which I had to pay in the neighbourhood, the expeditions which I should have made to Neuchâtel, to Bienne, to Yverdun, and to Nidau already wearied me in anticipation. A day to be spent off the island seemed the loss of so many hours’ happiness; and to leave the circle of the lake was for me to go out of my element. Besides, past experience had made me fearful. No sooner did something warm my heart than I expected to lose it; and my burning desire to end my days on the island was inseparably bound up with the fear of being expelled from it. I had got the habit of going in the evenings to sit on the shore, especially when the lake was rough. It gave me a strange pleasure to watch the waves break at my feet. I made them a symbol of the tumult of the world and of the contrasted peacefulness of my home; and so moved was I at times by this delightful thought that I felt the tears flow from my eyes. This repose, which I so passionately enjoyed, was only disturbed by the fear of losing it; but my feeling of uneasiness was so great as quite to spoil its charm. I felt my situation to be so precarious that I dared not count on it. ‘How gladly’, I used to say to myself, ‘would I exchange my liberty to leave this place for the assurance that I could always remain here. Instead of being allowed to stay here as a favour, why am I not kept here by force! The men who leave me here on sufferance may at any moment drive me away. How can I hope that when my persecutors see me happy they will let me continue to be so? It is little enough that they allow me to live here. I should like to be condemned, I should like to be forced to stay here, so that I may never be compelled to leave.’ I envied the good fortune of Micheli Ducret,* at peace in his castle of Arberg, who had only to wish for happiness and he was happy. In the end, from constantly giving myself over to these reflections and to the disturbing presentiments of new storms always about to break over me, I came to wish with extraordinary fervour that instead of only tolerating my residence upon the island, the Bernese would make it my prison for life; and I can swear that if it had only rested with me to secure my condemnation I should have done so most joyfully, since I infinitely preferred the necessity of spending the rest of my life there to the danger of being driven away.
My fears did not remain for long unfulfilled. At the moment when I least expected it I received a letter from the governor of Nidau, in whose jurisdiction the island of Saint-Pierre lay, in which he communicated to me on behalf of Their Excellencies the order to leave the island and their territory. I thought I was dreaming as I read it. Nothing could have been less natural, more unreasonable, or less to be foreseen than such an order; for I had looked on my forebodings rather as the fears of a man alarmed by his misfortunes than as a presentiment that could have the least foundation. The precautions I had taken to make sure of the government’s tacit consent; the visits of several Bernese and of the governor himself, who had overwhelmed me with friendliness and attentions; the hard weather in which it was barbarous to expel a sick man: everything made me and many other people believe that there was some irregularity about the order, and that those ill-disposed towards me had deliberately chosen the time of harvest, when meetings of the Senate were few, to deal me this sudden blow.
If I had followed my first indignant impulse I should have left on the spot. But where was I to go? What would become of me at the beginning of winter, without any plan or preparations, without any conveyance or guide? Unless I were to leave everything in confusion, my papers, my possessions, and all my affairs, I needed time to see to them; and it was not m
entioned in the order whether time was granted me or not. The persistence of my misfortunes was beginning to sap my courage. For the first time I felt my natural pride bending beneath the yoke of necessity, and despite the protests of my heart I had to humiliate myself and ask for some respite. It was to M. Graffenried, who had sent me the order, that I turned for an explanation of it. His letter had revealed very strong disapproval of this same order, which he had only conveyed to me with the greatest regret; and the evidence of his sympathy and esteem, of which the letter was full, seemed to me like a kindly invitation on his part to speak to him frankly. This I did. I felt quite certain indeed that my letter would open the eyes of those unjust men to their barbarous conduct, and that if this cruel order were not revoked I should at least be allowed a reasonable respite, perhaps the whole winter, in which to prepare for my departure and choose another place of refuge.