Note 54 — 26.

In Gibbon's Journal at Lausanne, in June, 1757, occurs the entry: "I saw Mademoiselle Curchod—Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori." He was, in fact, shortly afterwards engaged to Suzanne Curchod, daughter and only child of the Minister of Crassy, a hamlet at the foot of the lower slopes of the Jura, between Geneva and Lausanne. Both the lovers were born in 1737, and were in their twenty-first year. At Lausanne, at the Société du Printemps and the Académie de la Poudrière, of which Suzanne Curchod was the founder and the president, she frequently met Gibbon, and the attachment, on her side at least, was strong and genuine; on his it seems to have always had a touch of affectation. The account given by Julie von Bondeli (E. Bodemann, Julie von Bondeli, pp. 217, 218: Hanover, 1874) of Gibbon's passion has the exaggeration of unreality. He was seen, says this friend of Wieland and Rousseau, stopping the country people near Lausanne, and demanding, at the point of a naked dagger, whether a more adorable creature existed than Suzanne Curchod. Gibbon wrote her several letters, some of which are quoted by M. d'Haussonville in his Salon de Madame Necker, and addressed to her indifferent verses. The following lines seem to be an expansion of the entry in his Journal:—

They became engaged, and Gibbon implored her to marry him without waiting for the sanction of his father. This, however, she refused to do. When Gibbon left Lausanne in 1758, she wrote to him once; then all correspondence between them seems to have ceased, though Gibbon says that he wrote to her twice on his journey and once on his return to England. He also sent her his Essai with a dedicatory letter in 1761. In August, 1762, he wrote to break off the engagement, on the ground of his father's opposition, in a letter quoted by M. d'Haussonville (Le Salon de Madame Necker, pp. 57, 58). In 1763 Gibbon came to Lausanne, and there received from Mademoiselle Curchod a letter in reply, which showed, so far as words could prove anything, that she had never ceased to love him. Her friend, the Pastor Moultou, endeavoured to interest J. J. Rousseau in the story, and to make him speak to Gibbon on the subject. But Rousseau declined to interfere, saying that Gibbon was too cold-blooded a young man for his taste or for Mademoiselle Curchod's happiness. In Gibbon's unpublished diary, he thus comments on the receipt of this letter, September 22, 1763: "J'ai reçu une lettre des moins attendûes. C'etoit de Mademoiselle C. Fille dangereux et artificielle! Elle fait une apologie de sa conduite depuis le premier moment, qu'elle m'a connû, sa constance pour moi, son mepris pour M. de Montplaisir, et la fidelité delicate et soutenue qu'elle a cru voir dans la lettre où je lui annoncois qu'il n'y avoit plus d'espérance. Ses voyages à Lausanne, les adorateurs qu'elle y a eû, et la complaisance avec laquelle elle les a ecouté formoient l'article le plus difficile à justifier. Ni d'Eyverdun (dit elle), ni personne n'ont effacé pendant un instant mon image de son cœur. Elle s'amusoit à Lausanne sans y attacher. Je le veux. Mais ces amusements la convainquent toujours de la dissimulation la plus odieuse, et, si l'infidelité est quelquefois une foiblesse, la duplicité est toujours un vice. Cette affaire singulière dans toutes ses parties m'a été très utile; elle m'a ouvert les yeux sur le caractère des femmes, et elle me servira longtemps de preservatif contre les seductions de l'amour." Mademoiselle Curchod came to Lausanne in February, 1764, and again met Gibbon; "Elle me badine sur mon ton de petit maître. Elle a du voir cent fois que tout étoit fini sans retour." "Nous badinons," he says again in the same month, "trés librement sur nôtre tendresse passée, et je lui fais comprendre tout clairement que je suis an fait de son inconstance." Gibbon's continued coldness at length convinced Mademoiselle Curchod that his affection for her was entirely extinguished, and she took her leave of him in an indignant letter, quoted by M. d'Haussonville, as she undoubtedly thought, for ever. In this farewell letter she repudiates the suggestion of her inconstancy: "Si l'on vous a dit que j'aie écouté un seul moment M. d'Eyverdun, j'ai ses lettres, vous connoissez sa main, un coup d'œil suffit pour me justifier." Mademoiselle Curchod married, at the end of 1764, Jacques Necker, and became the mother of Madame de Stäel-Holstein.