istened," he says, "to the voice of truth and passion,
and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a
virtuous heart." We must remember that this and other rather glowing
passages in his Memoirs were written in his old age, when he had
returned to Lausanne, and when, after a long separation and many
vicissitudes, he and Madame Necker were again thrown together in an
intimacy of friendship which revived old memories. Letters of hers to
him which will be quoted in a later chapter show this in a striking
light. He indulged, he says, his dream of felicity, but on his return
to England he soon discovered that his father would not hear of this
"strange alliance," and then follows the sentence which has lost him
in the eyes of some persons. "After a painful struggle I yielded to my
fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son." What else he was to do
under the circumstances does not appear. He was wholly dependent on
his father, and on the Continent at least parental authority is not
regarded as a trifling impediment in such cases. Gibbon could only
have married Mdlle. Curchod as an exile and a pauper, if he had openly
withstood his father's wishes. "All for love" is a very pretty maxim,
but it is apt to entail trouble when practically applied. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, who had the most beautiful sentiments on paper, but who in
real life was not always a model of self-denial, found, as we shall
see, grave fault with Gibbon's conduct. Gibbon, as a plain man of
rather prosaic good sense, behaved neither heroically nor meanly.
Time, absence, and the scenes of a new life, which he found in
England, had their usual effect; his passion vanished. "My cure," he
says, "was accelerated by a faithful report of the tranquillity and
cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship
and esteem." The probability, indeed, that he and Mdlle. Curchod would
ever see each other again, must have seemed remote in the extreme.
Europe and England were involved in the Seven Years War; he was fixed
at home, and an officer in the militia; Switzerland was far off: when
and where were they likely to meet? They did, contrary to all
expectation, meet again, and renewed terms not so much of friendship
as of affection. Mdlle. Curchod, as the wife of Necker, became
somewhat of a celebrity, and it is chiefly owing to these last-named
circumstances that the world has ever heard of Gibbon's early love.

While he was at Lausanne G