feeling that he could not, without failing in his engagements and his duty as a citizen, neglect the public profession of the faith to which he had been restored eight years before, attended the religious services with regularity.  He even wrote to the pastor a letter in vindication of his book, and protesting the sincerity of his union with the reformed congregation.[135] The result of this was that the pastor came to tell him how great an honour he held it to count such a member in his flock, and how willing he was to admit him without further examination to partake of the communion.[136] Rousseau went to the ceremony with eyes full of tears and a heart swelling with emotion.  We may respect his mood as little or as much as we please, but it was certainly more edifying than the sight of Voltaire going through the same rite, merely to harass a priest and fill a bishop with fury.

In all other respects he lived a harmless life during the three years of his sojourn in the Val de Travers.  As he could never endure what he calls the inactive chattering of the parlour—­people sitting in front of one another with folded hands and nothing in motion except the tongue—­he learnt the art of making laces; he used to carry his pillow about with him, or sat at his own door working like the women of the village, and chatting with the passers-by.  He made presents of his work to young women about to marry, always on the condition that they should suckle their children when they came to have them.  If a little whimsical, it was a harmless and respectable pastime.  It is pleasanter to think of a philosopher finding diversion in weaving laces, than of noblemen making it the business of their lives to run after ribands.  A society clothed in breeches was incensed about the same time by Rousseau’s adoption of the Armenian costume, the vest, the furred bonnet, the caftan, and the girdle.  There was nothing very wonderful in this departure from use.  An Armenian tailor used often to visit some friends at Montmorency.  Rousseau knew him, and reflected that such a dress would be of singular comfort to him in the circumstances of his bodily disorder.[137] Here was a solid practical reason for what has usually been counted a demonstration of a turned brain.  Rousseau had as good cause for going about in a caftan as Chatham had for coming to the House of Parliament wrapped in flannel.  Vanity and a desire to attract notice may, we admit, have had something to do with Rousseau’s adoption of an uncommon way of dressing.  Shrewd wits like the Duke of Luxembourg and his wife did not suppose that it was so.  We, living a hundred years after, cannot possibly know whether it was so or not, and our estimate of Rousseau’s strange character would be very little worth forming, if it only turned on petty singularities of this kind.  The foolish, equivocally gifted with the quality of articulate speech, may, if they choose, satisfy their own self-love by reducing all action out of the common course to a series of variations on the same motive in others.  Men blessed by the benignity of experience will be thankful not to waste life in guessing evil about unknowable trifles.