When after many years Rousseau's character hardened, the influences which had surrounded his boyhood came out in their full force and the historian of opinion soon notices in his spirit and work a something which had no counterpart in the spirit and work of men who had been trained in Jesuit colleges.

At the first outset, however, every trace of religious sentiment was obliterated from sight, and he was left unprotected against the shocks of the world and the flesh.
At the age of eleven Jean Jacques was sent into a notary's office, but that respectable calling struck him in the same repulsive and insufferable way in which it has struck many other boys of genius in all countries.

Contrary to the usual rule, he did not rebel, but was ignominiously dismissed by his master[19] for dulness and inaptitude; his fellow-clerks pronounced him stupid and incompetent past hope.

He was next apprenticed to an engraver,[20] a rough and violent man, who seems to have instantly plunged the boy into a demoralised stupefaction.
The reality of contact with this coarse nature benumbed as by touch of torpedo the whole being of a youth who had hitherto lived on pure sensations and among those ideas which are nearest to sensations.

There were no longer heroic Romans in Rousseau's universe.