er, he
did not seek and would not have valued; and what he found in her, they
were naturally unable to appreciate, for they never were in the mood for
detecting it. "I have not seen much of happy men," he wrote when near
his end, "perhaps nothing; but I have many a time seen contented hearts,
and of all the objects that have struck me, I believe it is this which
has always given most contentment to myself."[128] This moderate
conception of felicity, which was always so characteristic with him, as
an even, durable, and rather low-toned state of the feelings, accounts
for his prolonged acquiescence in a companion whom men with more elation
in their ideal would assuredly have found hostile even to the most
modest contentment.

"The heart of my Theresa," he wrote long after the first tenderness had
changed into riper emotion on his side, and, alas, into indifference on
hers, "was that of an angel; our attachment waxed stronger with our
intimacy, and we felt more and more each day that we were made for one
another. If our pleasures could be described, their simplicity would
make you laugh; our excursions together out of town, in which I would
munificently expend eight or ten halfpence in some rural tavern; our
modest suppers at my window, seated in front of one another on two small
chairs placed on a trunk that filled up the breadth of the embrasure.
Here the window did duty for a table, we breathed the fresh air, we
could see the neighbourhood and the people passing by, and though on the
fourth story, could look down into the street as we ate. Who shall
describe, who shall feel the charms of those meals, consisting of a
coarse quartern loaf, some cherries, a tiny morsel of cheese, and a pint
of wine which we drank between us? Ah, what delicious seasoning there is
in friendship, confidence, intimacy, gentleness of soul! We used
sometimes to remain thus until midnight, without once thinking of the
time."[129]

Men and women are often more fairly judged by the way in which they bear
the burden of what they have done, than by the prime act which laid the
burden on their lives.[130] The deeper part of us shows in the manner of
accepting consequences. On the whole, Rousseau's relations with this
woman present him in a better light than those with any other person
whatever. If he became with all the rest of the world suspicious, angry,
jealous, profoundly diseased in a word, with her he was habitually
trustful, affectionate, car