"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 around," as Talleyrand put it.
"I quite like you," said the daring daughter, as the eloquent Gibbon sat by her side at a dinner.
"Why shouldn't you like me—I came near being your papa!"
"I know, and would I have looked like you?"
"Perhaps."
"What a calamity!"
Even then she possessed that same bubbling wit that was hers years later when she sat at table with D'Alembert. On one side of the great author was Madame Recamier, famous for beauty (and later for a certain "Beauty-Cream"), on the other the daughter of Necker.