Madame de Stael - Page 2

hungry for them--but the trouble is, few men are efficient.

"It was none of his business!" said M. Vernet to his partner, trying to
ease conscience with reasons.

"Yes; but see how he accepted the inevitable!"

"Ah! true, he has two qualities that are the property only of strong men:
confidence and resignation. I think--I think I was hasty!"

So young Necker was reinstated, and in six months was cashier, in three
years a partner.

Not long after, he married Susanna Curchod, a poor governess.

But Mademoiselle Curchod was rich in mental endowment: refined, gentle,
spiritual, she was a true mate to the high-minded Necker. She was a Swiss,
too, and if you know how a young man and a young woman, countryborn, in a
strange city are attracted to each other, you will better understand this
particular situation.

Some years before, Gibbon had loved and courted the beautiful Mademoiselle
Curchod in her quiet home in the Jura Mountains. They became engaged.
Gibbon wrote home, breaking the happy news to his parents.

"Has the beautiful Curchod of whom you sing, a large dowry?" inquired the
mother.

"She has no dowry! I can not tell a lie," was the meek answer. The mother
came on and extinguished the match in short order.

Gibbon never married. But he frankly tells us all about his love for
Susanna Curchod, and relates how he visited her, in her splendid Paris
home. "She greeted me without embarrassment," says Gibbon, resentfully;
"and in the evening Necker left us together in the parlor, bade me
good-night, and lighting a candle went off to bed!"

Gibbon, historian and philosopher, was made of common clay (for authors
are made of clay, like plain mortals), and he could not quite forgive
Madame Necker for not being embarrassed on meeting her former lover,
neither could he forgive Necker for not being jealous.

But that only daughter of the Neckers, Germaine, pleased Gibbon--pleased
him better than the mother, and Gibbon extended his stay in Paris and
called often.

"She was a splendid creature," Gibbon relates; "only seventeen, but a
woman grown, physically and mentally; not handsome, but dazzling,
brilliant, emotional, sensitive, daring!"

Gibbon was a bit of a romanticist, as all historians are, and he no doubt
thought it would be a fine denouement to life's play to capture the
daughter of his old sweetheart, and avenge himself on Fate and the
unembarrassed Madame Necker and the unpiqued husband, all at one fell
stroke--and she would not be dowerless either. Ha, ha!

But Gibbon forgot that he was past forty, short in stature, and short of
breath, and "miles