In the higher ranks they are absolutely stifled, and under the mask of sentiment it is only interest or vanity that speaks."[61] From Lausanne he went to Neuchatel, where he had more success, for, teaching others, he began himself to learn.

But no success was marked enough to make him resist a vagrant chance.

One day in his rambles falling in with an archimandrite of the Greek church, who was traversing Europe in search of subscriptions for the restoration of the Holy Sepulchre, he at once attached himself to him in the capacity of interpreter.

In this position he remained for a few weeks, until the French minister at Soleure took him away from the Greek monk, and despatched him to Paris to be the attendant of a young officer.[62] A few days in the famous city, which he now saw for the first time, and which disappointed his expectations just as the sea and all other wonders disappointed them,[63] convinced him that here was not what he sought, and he again turned his face southwards in search of Madame de Warens and more familiar lands.
The interval thus passed in roaming over the eastern face of France, and which we may date in the summer of 1732,[64] was always counted by Rousseau among the happy epochs of his life, though the weeks may seem grievously wasted to a generation which is apt to limit its ideas of redeeming the time to the two pursuits of reading books or making money.
He travelled alone and on foot from Soleure to Paris and from Paris back again to Lyons, and this was part of the training which served him in the stead of books.

Scarcely any great writer since the revival of letters has been so little literary as Rousseau, so little indebted to literature for the most characteristic part of his work.