CHAP. XII. MADEMOISELLE CURCHOD-AFTERWARDS MADAME NECKER. manners. I hesitate, from the apprehension of ridicule, when I approach the delicate subject of my early love. By this word I do not mean the polite attention, the gallantry, without hope or design, which has originated in the spirit of chivalry, and is interwoven with the texture of French I understand by this passion the union of desire, friendship, and tenderness, which is inflamed by a single female, which prefers her to the rest of her sex, and which seeks her possession as the supreme or the sole happiness of our being. I need not blush at recollecting the object of my choice; and though my love was disappointed of success, I am rather proud that I was once capable of feeling such a pure and exalted sentiment. The personal attractions of Mademoiselle Susan Curchod were embellished by the virtues and talents of the mind. Her fortune was humble, but her family was respectable. Her mother, a native of France, had preferred her religion to her country. The profession of her father did not extinguish the moderation and philosophy of his temper, and he lived, content with a small salary and laborious duty, in the obscure lot of minister of Crassy, in the mountains that separate the Pays de Vaud from the county of Burgundy. In the solitude of a sequestered village he bestowed a liberal, and even learned, education on his only daughter. She surpassed his hopes by her proficiency in the sciences and languages; and in her short visits to some relations at Lausanne, the wit, the beauty, and erudition of Mademoiselle Curchod were the theme of universal applause. The report of such a prodigy awakened my curiosity; I saw and loved. I found her learned without pedantry, lively in conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more familiar acquaintance. She permitted me to make her two or three visits at her * Extracts from the Journal. March, 1757. I wrote some critical observations upon Plautus. March 8th. June. August. Oct. 15th. Nov. 1st. Nov. 17th Jan. 1758. Jan. 23rd. I saw Mademoiselle Curchod-Omnia Vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori. I went to Crassy, and staid two days. I went to Geneva. I came back to Lausanne, having passed through Crassy. I went to visit M. de Watteville at Loin, and saw Made- I went to Crassy, and staid there six days. phoses, finished the conic sections with M. de Tray- I saw Alzire acted by the society at Monrepos. Voltaire acted Alvarez; D'Hermanches, Zamore; De St. Cierge, Guzman; M. de Gentil, Monteze; and Ma dame Denys, Alzire. ther's house. I passed some happy days there, in the mountains of Bergundy, and her parents honourably encouraged the connexion. In a calm retirement the gay vanity of youth no longer fluttered in her bosom; she listened to the voice of truth and passion, and 1 might presume to hope that I had made some impression on a virtuous heart. At Crassey and Lausanne I indulged my dream of felicity: but on my return to England, I soon discovered that my father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that without his consent I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful struggle I yielded to my fate: I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son;* my wound was insensibly healed by time, absence, and the habits of a new life. My cure was accelerated by a faithful report of tranquillity and cheerfulness of the lady herself, and my love subsided in friendship and esteem. The minister of Crassey soon afterwards died; his stipend died with him: his daughter retired to Geneva, where, by teaching young ladies, she earned a hard subsistence for herself and her mother; but in her lowest distress she maintained a spotless reputation, and a dignified behaviour. A rich banker of Paris, a citizen of Geneva, had the good fortune and good sense to discover and possess this inestimable treasure; and in the capital of taste and luxury she resisted the temptations of wealth, as she had sustained the hardships of indigence. The * See Œuvres de Rousseau, tom. xxxiii. p. 88, 89, octavo edition. As an author I shall not appeal from the judgment, or taste, or caprice of Jean Jacques; but that extraorninary man, whom I admire and pity, should have been less precipitate in condemning the moral character and conduct of a strange. genius of her husband has exalted him to the most conspicuous station in Europe. In every change of prospe rity and disgrace he has reclined on the bosom of a faithful friend; and Mademoiselle Curchod is now the wife of M. Necker, the minister, and perhaps the legislator, of the French monarchy. Whatsoever have been the fruits of my educatien, they must be ascribed to the fortunate banishment which placed me at Lausanne. I have sometimes applied to my own fate the verses of Pindar, which remind an Olympic champion that his victory was the consequence of his exile; and that at home, like a domestic fowl, his days might have rolled away inactive and inglorious. ήτοι και τεα κου, Ενδομαχας ὑπ' ἀλέκτωρ, Συγγόνω, παρ' ἑρτια Ακλέης τιμα κατεφυλλορουσε ποδων. Εἰ μη στασις ἀντιανειρα Κνωσίας άμερσε πατρας. Olymp. x11. If my childish revolt against the religion of my country had not stripped me in time of my academical gown, the five important years so liberally improved in the studies and conversation of Lausanne, would have been steeped * Thus like the crested bird of Mars, at home And wasted with intestine wars, Inglorious hadst thou spent thy vig'rous bloom: Expelled thee from thy native Crete, And driven thee with more glorious toils, West's Pindar. in port and prejudice among the monks of Oxford. Had the fatigue of idleness compelled me to read, the path of learning would not have been enlighted by a ray of philosophic freedom. I should have grown to manhood ignorant of the life and language of Europe, and my knowledge of the world would have been confined to an English cloister. But my religious error fixed me at Lausanne in a state of banishment and disgrace. The rigid course of discipline and abstinence, to which I was condemned, invigorated the constitution of my mind and body; poverty and pride restrained me from my countrymen. One mischief, however, and in their eyes a serious and irreparable mischief was derived from the success of my Swiss education: I had ceased to be an Englishman. At the flexible period of youth, from the age of sixteen to twenty-one, my opinions, habits, and sentiments were cast in a foreign mould; the faint and distant remembrance of England was almost obliterated; my native language was grown less familiar; and I should have cheerfully accepted the offer of a moderate independence on the terms of perpetual exile. By the good sense and temper of Pavilliard my yoke was insensibly lightened: he left me master of my time and actions; but he could neither change my situation, nor increase my allowance; and with the progress of my years and reason I impatiently sighed for the moment of my deliverance. At length, in the spring of the year 1758, my father signified his permission and his pleasure that I should immediately return home. We were then in the midst of a war: the resentment of the French at our taking their ships without a declaration, had rendered that polite nation some |