Two incidents of this period remain to us, described in Rousseau’s own words, and as they reveal a certain sweetness in which his life unhappily did not afterwards greatly abound, it may help our equitable balance of impressions about him to reproduce them.  Every Sunday he used to spend the day at Paquis at Mr. Fazy’s, who had married one of his aunts, and who carried on the production of printed calicoes.  “One day I was in the drying-room, watching the rollers of the hot press; their brightness pleased my eye; I was tempted to lay my fingers on them, and I was moving them up and down with much satisfaction along the smooth cylinder, when young Fazy placed himself in the wheel and gave it a half-quarter turn so adroitly, that I had just the ends of my two longest fingers caught, but this was enough to crush the tips and tear the nails.  I raised a piercing cry; Fazy instantly turned back the wheel, and the blood gushed from my fingers.  In the extremity of consternation he hastened to me, embraced me, and besought me to cease my cries, or he would be undone.  In the height of my own pain, I was touched by his; I instantly fell silent, we ran to the pond, where he helped me to wash my fingers and to staunch the blood with moss.  He entreated me with tears not to accuse him; I promised him that I would not, and I kept my word so well that twenty years after no one knew the origin of the scar.  I was kept in bed for more than three weeks, and for more than two months was unable to use my hand.  But I persisted that a large stone had fallen and crushed my fingers."[16]

The other story is of the same tenour, though there is a new touch of sensibility in its concluding words.  “I was playing at ball at Plain Palais, with one of my comrades named Plince.  We began to quarrel over the game; we fought, and in the fight he dealt me on my bare head a stroke so well directed, that with a stronger arm it would have dashed my brains out.  I fell to the ground, and there never was agitation like that of this poor lad, as he saw the blood in my hair.  He thought he had killed me.  He threw himself upon me, and clasped me eagerly in his arms, while his tears poured down his cheeks, and he uttered shrill cries.  I returned his embrace with all my force, weeping like him, in a state of confused emotion which was not without a kind of sweetness.  Then he tried to stop the blood which kept flowing, and seeing that our two handkerchiefs were not enough, he dragged me off to his mother’s; she had a small garden hard by.  The good woman nearly fell sick at sight of me in this condition; she kept strength enough to dress my wound, and after bathing it well, she applied flower-de-luce macerated in brandy, an excellent remedy much used in our country.  Her tears and those of her son, went to my very heart, so that I looked upon them for a long while as my mother and my brother."[17]