ery well that is
not our case."[149] Of course, this may have been a marriage according
to the truth of nature, and Rousseau was as free to choose his own rites
as more sacramental performers, but it is clear from his own words about
property that there was no pretence of a marriage in law. He and Theresa
were on profoundly uncomfortable terms about this time,[150] and
Rousseau is not the only person by many thousands who has deceived
himself into thinking that some form of words between man and woman must
magically transform the substance of their characters and lives, and
conjure up new relations of peace and steadfastness.

* * * * *

We have, however, been outstripping slow-footed destiny, and have now to
return to the time when Theresa did not drink brandy, nor run after
stable-boys, nor fill Rousseau's soul with bitterness and suspicion, but
sat contentedly with him in an evening taking a stoic's meal in the
window of their garret on the fourth floor, seasoning it with
"confidence, intimacy, gentleness of soul," and that general comfort of
sensation which, as we know to our cost, is by no means an invariable
condition either of duty done externally or of spiritual growth within.
It is perhaps hard for us to feel that we are in the presence of a great
religious reactionist; there is so little sign of the higher graces of
the soul, there are so many signs of the lowering clogs of the flesh.
But the spirit of a man moves in mysterious ways, and expands like the
plants of the field with strange and silent stirrings. It is one of the
chief tests of worthiness and freedom from vulgarity of soul in us, to
be able to have faith that this expansion is a reality, and the most
important of all realities. We do not rightly seize the type of Socrates
if we can never forget that he was the husband of Xanthippe, nor David's
if we can only think of him as the murderer of Uriah, nor Peter's if we
can simply remember that he denied his master. Our vision is only
blindness, if we can never bring ourselves to see the possibilities of
deep mystic aspiration behind the vile outer life of a man, or to
believe that this coarse Rousseau, scantily supping with his coarse
mate, might yet have many glimpses of the great wide horizons that are
haunted by figures rather divine than human.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] In theory he was even now curiously prudent and almost
sagacious; witness the Projet pour l'Education,