ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau had run out into the field immediately after the sermon to romp with other young ragamuffins like himself from the poorer quarters of Geneva, and at nightfall he got back to the gate of the Calvinist town just in time to see the soldiers pull up the outer drawbridge. He had heard retreat being sounded and the drum being rolled when he was still half a league outside the walls. The best speed he could get out of his sixteen-year-old legs had not got him back in time. The surprising thing in the whole affair is the ease, one might almost say impudence, with which Jean-Jacques at once threw off all reserve with a lady whose position, as he must have felt, was so infinitely higher than his. Not only was he free from all shyness with her, but he even adopted in his speech the familiar tone which he afterwards always employed with her.
