In July 1770, he made his way to Paris, and here he remained eight years longer, not without the introduction of a certain degree of order into his outer life, though the clouds of vague suspicion and distrust, half bitter, half mournful, hung heavily as ever upon his mind.  The Dialogues, which he wrote at this period (1775-76) to vindicate his memory from the defamation that was to be launched in a dark torrent upon the world at the moment of his death, could not possibly have been written by a man in his right mind.  Yet the best of the Musings, which were written still nearer the end, are masterpieces in the style of contemplative prose.  The third, the fifth, the seventh, especially abound in that even, full, mellow gravity of tone which is so rare in literature, because the deep absorption of spirit which is its source is so rare in life.  They reveal Rousseau to us with a truth beyond that attained in any of his other pieces—­a mournful sombre figure, looming shadowily in the dark glow of sundown among sad and desolate places.  There is nothing like them in the French tongue, which is the speech of the clear, the cheerful, or the august among men; nothing like this sonorous plainsong, the strangely melodious expression in the music of prose of a darkened spirit which yet had imaginative visions of beatitude.

* * * * *

It is interesting to look on one or two pictures of the last waste and obscure years of the man, whose words were at this time silently fermenting for good and for evil in many spirits—­a Schiller, a Herder, a Jeanne Phlipon, a Robespierre, a Gabriel Mirabeau, and many hundreds of those whose destiny was not to lead, but ingenuously to follow.  Rousseau seems to have repulsed nearly all his ancient friends, and to have settled down with dogged resolve to his old trade of copying music.  In summer he rose at five, copied music until half-past seven; munched his breakfast, arranging on paper during the process such plants as he had gathered the previous afternoon; then he returned to his work, dined at half-past twelve, and went forth to take coffee at some public place.  He would not return from his walk until nightfall, and he retired at half-past ten.  The pavements of Paris were hateful to him because they tore his feet, and, said he, with deeply significant antithesis, “I am not afraid of death, but I dread pain.”  He always found his way as fast as possible to one of the suburbs, and one of his greatest delights was to watch Mont Valerien in the sunset.  “Atheists,” he said calumniously, “do not love the country; they like the environs of Paris, where you have all the pleasures of the city, good cheer, books, pretty women; but if you take these things away, then they die of weariness.”  The note of every bird held him attentive, and filled his mind with delicious images.  A graceful story is told of two swallows who made a nest in Rousseau’s sleeping-room, and hatched the eggs there.  “I was no more than a doorkeeper for them,” he said, “for I kept opening the window for them every moment.  They used to fly with a great stir round my head, until I had fulfilled the duties of the tacit convention between these swallows and me.”