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.