Yet there were times innumerable when they looked like cool retreats for those who wanted rest; when, in the summer solstice, they offered the pleasant peace of the happy fireside.

How often had Jean Jacques stood off from it all of a summer night and said to himself: "Look at that, my Jean Jacques.

It is all yours, Manor and mills and farms and factory--all." "Growing, growing, fattening, while I drone in my feather bed," he had as often said, with the delighted observation of the philosopher.

"And me but a young man yet--but a mere boy," he would add.

"I have piled it up--I have piled it up, and it keeps on growing, first one thing and then another." Could such a man be unhappy?
Finding within himself his satisfaction, his fountain of appeasement, why should not his days be days of pleasantness and peace?
So it appeared to him during that summer, just passed, when he had surveyed the World and his world within the World, and it seemed to his innocent mind that he himself had made it all.
There he was, not far beyond forty, and eligible to become a member of Parliament, or even a count of the Holy Roman Empire! He had thought of both these honours, but there was so much to occupy him--he never had a moment to himself, except at night; and then there was planning and accounting to do, his foremen to see, or some knotty thing to disentangle.