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.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54