o strong trace now nor for
many years to come of any irresistible inclination for literary
composition. We find him, indeed, in 1736 showing consciousness of a
slight skill in writing,[98] but he only thought of it as a possible
recommendation for a secretaryship to some great person. He also appears
to have practised verses, not for their own sake, for he always most
justly thought his own verses mediocre, and they are even worse; but on
the ground that verse-making is a rather good exercise for breaking
one's self to elegant inversions, and learning a greater ease in
prose.[99] At the age of one and twenty he composed a comedy, long
afterwards damned as _Narcisse_. Such prelusions, however, were of small
importance compared with the fact of his being surrounded by a moral
atmosphere in which his whole mind was steeped. It is not in the study
of Voltaire or another, but in the deep soft soil of constant mood and
old habit that such a style as Rousseau's has its growth.

It was the custom to return to Chamberi for the winter, and the day of
their departure from Les Charmettes was always a day blurred and tearful
for Rousseau; he never left it without kissing the ground, the trees,
the flowers; he had to be torn away from it as from a loved companion.
At the first melting of the winter snows they left their dungeon in
Chamberi, 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 w