After crossing the Alps on his homeward journey, Gibbon had had some
thoughts of visiting the southern provinces of France. But when he
reached Lyons he found letters "expressive of some impatience" for his
return. Though he does not exactly say as much, we may justly conclude
that the elder Gibbon's pecuniary difficulties were beginning to be
oppressive. So the traveller, with the dutifulness that he ever showed
to his father, at once bent his steps northward. Again he passed
through Paris, and the place had a new attraction in his eyes in the
person of Mdlle. Curchod, now become Madame Necker, and wife of the
great financier.
This perhaps will be the most convenient place to notice and estimate
a certain amount of rather spiteful gossip, of which Gibbon was the
subject in Switzerland about this time. Rousseau and his friend
Moultou have preserved it for us, and it is probable that it has lost
none of its pungency in passing through the hands of the latter. The
substance of it is this:--that in the year 1763, when Gibbon revisited
Lausanne, as we have seen, Susanne Curchod was still in a pitiable
state of melancholy and well nigh broken-hearted at Gibbon's manifest
coldness, which we know he considered to be "friendship and esteem.
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