ABSTRACT
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was free from the shyness which kept him tongue-tied among people in general and made small talk a torture to him. He was garrulous, gay and humorous, whimsical, moody, sometimes violent and tyrannical. Jean-Jacques was, in other words, his natural self, and he opened his whole self to her. His genius, turbulent, disorderly, and wholly lyrical, began to bud and to flower. Jean-Jacques teeming brain gave birth to no abstract ideas, unfolding in logical sequence; but thoughts bubbled to its surface and overflowed with the pressure of the emotions which inspired them. Madame de Warens had occasion to realize the truth when he became infatuated, just as he had previously been infatuated with Bacle, with a rascally fellow who knocked at her door one winter evening, giving his name as Ventura de Villanova and claiming to be a musician from Paris, reduced by poverty to earn his way by performances of church music.
