Gibbon writes to his friend Holroyd, "The Curchod (Madame Necker) I
saw in Paris. She was very fond of me, and the husband particularly
civil. Could they insult me more cruelly? Ask me every evening to
supper, go to bed and leave me alone with his wife--what impertinent
security! It is making an old lover of mighty little consequence. She
is as handsome as ever, and much genteeler; seems pleased with her
wealth rather than proud of it. I was exalting Nanette d'Illens's good
luck and the fortune" (this evidently refers to some common
acquaintance, who had changed her name to advantage). "'What fortune,'
she said with an air of contempt:--'not above twenty thousand livres a
year.' I smiled, and she caught herself immediately, 'What airs I give
myself in despising twenty thousand livres a year, who a year ago
looked upon eight hundred as the summit of my wishes.'"
Let us turn to the lady's account of the same scenes. "I do not know
if I told you," she writes to a friend at Lausanne, "that I have seen
Gibbon, and it has given me more pleasure than I know how to express.
Not indeed that I retain any sentiment for a man who I think does not
deserve much" (this little toss of pique or pride need not mislead
us); "but my feminine vanity could not have had a more complete and
honest triumph.
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