The wooden galleries of the inn overlooked a garden with a
stream running through it, and for a few hours we cheated ourselves
into the belief that we were once more in our home at Aix, with its
galleries, its silence, and its solitude.
XLII.
We wished before we left Chambery and the valley we so much loved to
visit together the humble dwelling of Jean Jacques Rousseau and Madame
de Warens, at Les Charmettes. A landscape is but a man or a woman. What
is Vaucluse without Petrarch? Sorrento without Tasso? What is Sicily
without Theocritus, or the Paraclet without Heloise? What is Annecy
without Madame de Warens? What is Chambery without Jean Jacques
Rousseau? A sky without rays, a voice without echo, a landscape without
life! Man does not only animate his fellow-men, he animates all nature.
He carries his own immortality with him into heaven, but bequeaths
another to the spots that he has consecrated by his presence; it is
only there we can trace his course, and really converse with his
memory. We took with us the volume of the "Confessions" in which the
poet of Les Charmettes describes this rustic retreat.
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