'I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all Nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.'
The life of the historian was, in fact, destined to last only for another six years—years in which he sometimes was desperately anxious to relieve his loneliness, aggravated by the death of Deyverdun, by seeking 'the domestic society of a female companion,' but inclined, on the whole, to the opinion encouraged by Madame Necker, that the remedy would be worse than the disease. We probably shall not be wrong in conjecturing that the pleasure which he derived from Madame Necker's correspondence and society assisted him in coming to this decision. At any rate, we must admit that there are few literary romances more remarkable than this story, of the renewal of love some thirty years or so after a lovers' quarrel.
The lovers parted, as we have seen, with high-strung feelings—at least upon the lady's side. They met again soon after Mademoiselle Curchod had accepted the heart and hand of Jacques Necker, the rich Parisian banker, destined to become Louis XVI.'s Minister of Finance. Gibbon, coming to Paris, called, and was well received. We have accounts of the visit from both of them. Madame Necker says that her vanity was flattered because Gibbon appeared to be dazzled by the contemplation of her wealth. Gibbon complains that he was not taken very seriously, that M. Necker invited him to supper every evening, and went to bed, leaving him alone with his wife. The philosopher Balzac would have called him a fool, and classed him with the prédestinés; but it does not appear that scandal, or occasion for scandal, or anything worse than the interchange of sentimental persiflage, resulted.
A gap in the history of their friendship follows, but in 1776 we find the Neckers visiting Gibbon in Bentinck Street. Gibbon writes patronizingly of the husband as 'a sensible, good-natured creature,' and of the wife he says: 'I live with her just as I used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple, reasonable Suissesse.'
We need not interpret this statement au pied de la lettre, but the visit certainly marks a stage in the story of their intimacy. Gibbon went to see the Neckers in Paris in the following year, and after his return to London Madame du Deffand told him how she had talked to Madame Necker about him. 'We talked of M. Gibbon. Of what else? Of M. Gibbon—continually of M. Gibbon.' And Madame Necker herself wrote, at about the same time, with reference to the publication of the first volumes of 'The Decline and Fall':
'Wherever I go your books shall follow me, and give me pleasure and happiness. If you write, too, your letters will be welcome and appreciated. If you do not write ... but I refuse to contemplate this painful possibility.'
Gibbon's migration to Lausanne and the Neckers' purchase of their famous country seat at Coppet united them by still closer ties, and one cannot help noticing that at this period of their lives—when they were both something over fifty years of age—Madame Necker's letters to Gibbon became at once more frequent and more affectionate. Some of those letters, indeed, can only be distinguished from love-letters by reading into them our knowledge of Madame Necker's reputation for propriety. We have seen her dissuading Gibbon from marriage on the ground that to marry late is to marry unhappily. Another reason which she gives is that 'without a miracle it would be impossible to find a woman worthy of you.' Of a contemplated visit to Lausanne she says: 'I am looking forward with a delightful sentiment to the day I am to pass with you.' And afterwards:
'Returning here, and finding only the tombs of those I loved so well, I found you, as it were, a solitary tree whose shade still covers the desert which separates me from the first years of my life.'
And in another letter, more sentimental still, we read: