Gibbon's curiosity was piqued to see such a prodigy, and he was smitten with love at first sight.

"I found her" he says "learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners." He was twenty and she seventeen years of age; no impediment was placed in the way of their meeting; and he was a frequent guest in her father's house.

In fact Gibbon paid his court with an assiduity which makes an exception in his usually unromantic nature.

"She listened," he says, "to the voice of truth and passion, and I might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart." We must remember that this and other rather glowing passages in his Memoirs were written in his old age, when he had returned to Lausanne, and when, after a long separation and many vicissitudes, he and Madame Necker were again thrown together in an intimacy of friendship which revived old memories.

Letters of hers to him which will be quoted in a later chapter show this in a striking light.