Necker

“ Necker passing, perhaps by mere accident, stopped his carriage, and expressing himself with some resentment for such treatment to a Prince of the blood and a friend of the people, ordered the bust to be taken to the Palais Royal, where it was washed, crowned with laurel, and thence, with Necker's own bust, carried to Versailles. The King's aunts, coming from Bellevue as the procession was upon the road, ordered the guards to send the men away who bore the busts, that the King and Queen might not be insulted with the sight. ”

“ But Madame Necker, besides being young, rich, and handsome, was bitten with the prevailing craze for literature, could listen unwearingly for hours to the most laboured portraits and éloges, and, although herself the purest and most austere of women, would open her salon to any reprobate, provided only he were witty.
Madame Necker, first known to us as Suzanne Curchod, was the daughter of a Swiss pastor, and saw the light in the presbytery of Crassier in the Pays de Vaud. ”

“ It may be also that Mme. Necker envied the daughter's cleverness, even though that cleverness was little more, in the end, than the borrowing of brilliant things from other persons. At any rate, the two never cared for each other, and Germaine gave to her father the affection which her mother neither received nor sought.
It was perhaps to tame the daughter's exuberance that a marriage was arranged for Mlle. Necker with the Baron de Stael-Holstein, who then represented the court of Sweden at Paris. ”

“ Necker, the universal genius whose advent to the ministry was hailed as the panacea for all discords, and difficulties, and threatened dangers; Necker, the “Achilles of computation,” whose, vigorous hand and capacious brain were to seize France, tottering on the brink of some invisible gulf, and steady her ”

“ Necker’s singing Brünnhilde; she may help her, if it’s not one of her sore nights.”
“Is she sore at Thea?” Dr. Archie asked wonderingly.
“My dear man, Necker’s sore at everything. She’s breaking up; too early; just when she ought to be at her best. There’s one story that she is struggling under some serious malady, another that she learned a bad method at the Prague Conservatory and has ruined her organ. She’s the sorest thing in the world. If she weathers this winter through, it’ll be her last. She’s paying for it with the last rags of her voice. And then—” Fred whistled softly. ”

“ Yet continual power produces arrogance, and the soul unchecked finally believes in its own omniscience.
Of course such a matrimonial prize as the daughter of Necker was sought for, even fought for. But the women who can see clear through a man, like a Roentgen ray, do not invite soft demonstration. They give passion a chill. Love demands a little illusion; it must be clothed in mystery. And although we find evidences that many youths stood in the hallways and sighed, the daughter of Necker never saw fit by a nod to bring them to her feet. ”

“ All made love to her, and, misled by the studied warmth of pompous eloquence with which she proclaimed her delight in their society, they not rarely persuaded themselves that they had added her to the list of their conquests, and were chagrined and not a little disgusted later to discover that the only man she cared for was her husband. Indeed, she bored everybody with praise of M. Necker, composing and reading aloud in her own salon a preposterous portrait of him, in which she compared him to most things in heaven and earth and the waters under the earth, from an angel to a polypus. ”

“ Many years after the romance had died, when Madame Necker was a happy matron, Gibbon, still a bachelor, decided to make Switzerland his permanent home. Motives of economy, not of romance, dictated this choice. In 1783 he moved to Lausanne, where he completed his history, established a literary salon, and enjoyed life in spite of somewhat serious attacks of gout. M., Mdme., and Mslle. Necker (the last to become Madame de Staël) were frequent visitors, and he attached himself to Madame Necker by the bonds of a close but strictly Platonic friendship. ”

“ The marquise, by this time infinitely weary of men and things, appears soon to have tired of Madame Necker's declamations and M. Necker's superiority. Her final judgment on the wife was very severe, rather ill-tempered, and therefore unjust. Madame Necker was, she says, "stiff and frigid, full of self-consciousness, but an upright woman." Her liking for the husband held out longer, but finally succumbed to the discovery that, while very intelligent, he failed to elicit wit from others. "One felt oneself more stupid in his company than when with other people or alone." ”

“ Surely he's quite a man; but the man who bosses men's minds a thousand years after he's dead—he's the real one. And that kind of a man, so far's I know things, Necker, never lived too comfortably on earth. He can't. I tell you, Necker, you can't be born into a fat life without being born into a fat soul, too. ”

“ M. Necker, who detested literary women, had looked with but scanty favour on his daughter's passion for writing, and it is probable that, as long as she was exclusively under Madame Necker's rule, he did not feel for her more than the commonplace sort of affection which a busy and serious-minded father bestows on a little girl.
During her childhood Germaine herself lavished all her warmest affection on her mother, being apparently drawn to her by the subtle attraction which a very deep and reserved nature exercises on an excitable one. ”

“ If such were the widow's ideas, they were doomed to disappointment; for very soon after Necker's introduction to Suzanne he made a transfer of his affections to her. He left, however, for Geneva, without declaring his sentiments; and Mademoiselle Curchod, once again in love, and once again in despair, poured out her feelings in a long letter to Moulton. That ever faithful friend did his best to bring things to a happy termination, by taking care that M. Necker, during his sojourn in Geneva, should hear nothing but praise of Suzanne. ”

“ Holroyd, Deyverdun, Madame Necker were more to him than all the great people with whom he now became acquainted. Necker and his wife came over from Paris and paid him a long visit in Bentinck Street, when his laurels were just fresh. "I live with her" he writes, "just as I used to do twenty years ago, laugh at her Paris varnish, and oblige her to become a simple reasonable Suissesse. The man, who might read English husbands lessons of proper and dutiful behaviour, is a sensible, good-natured creature." ”

“ From Wiesenbach to Heidelberg, one follows the course of the Necker, cased by hills which carry forests on a bank of sand and red sulphate. How many rivers I have seen flow! I met pilgrims from Walthüren: they formed two parallel lines on either side of the high-road; the carriages passed in the middle. The women walked bare-foot, beads in hand, with a parcel of linen on their heads; the men bare-headed, also carrying their beads in their hands. It was raining; in some places the watery clouds crept along the sides of the hills. ”

“ She had no alternative but to resign herself, and therefore, silently and coldly as was her wont, she accepted the situation. Nevertheless, she was neither reconciled to it, nor felt the same interest in Germaine again. Years afterwards, the bitterness that she had hoarded in her soul betrayed itself in one little phrase. Madame Necker de Sausanne was congratulating her on her daughter's astonishing powers. "She is nothing," said Madame Necker, coldly, "nothing to that which I would have made her." ”

“ The wild current thus turned, the men, who in the morning had declared, ‘that liberty was safe, since Necker was allowed to watch over her,’ now accused him of ambition, and a desire to keep well with the court, by facilitating the return, or escape, of it’s minions. Such in fact was the inconstancy of a people, always running after theatrical scenes, that the tocsin was rung to denounce Necker as a courtier in one quarter of the city, at the very time the Palais 274Royal was illuminated to celebrate his return as a patriot. ”

“ This was a cruel blow to Madame Necker. A nature allowed to develop spontaneously, a mind virgin of the pruning-hook, were objects of as much horror to her as if they had been forbidden by Heaven. That her daughter, just at the final moment, when what was doubtless the mere preliminary course of study had been traversed, should be released from bondage and abandoned to her own impetuosity, was well-nigh insupportable. ”

“ That direction was mainly to be influenced by the conduct and character of the sovereign, but it was also, in some degree, to be affected by the conduct and character of the statesman to whom the destinies of France were for the moment confided.
M. Necker belonged to a class of men not uncommon in our own time. His abilities, though good, were not of the first order; his mind had been directed to one particular branch of business; and, as is common with persons who have no great genius and one specialty, he took the whole of government to be that part which he best understood. ”

“ Humanity, what a poor judge you are!"
Shortly after her marriage, Mme. Necker wrote to one of her friends: "My dear, I have married a man who, according to my ideas, is the kindest of mortals, and I am not the only one to judge thus. I had had a liking for him ever since I learned to know him. At present, I see, in all nature, only my husband. I take notice of other men only in so far as they come more or less up to the standard of my husband, and I compare them only for the pleasure of seeing the difference." ”

“ Jacques Necker, born of Protestant parents at Geneva, was sent, at the age of fifteen, to seek his fortune at Paris. After serving as a clerk in the banking-house of Vernet, he passed into that of the eminent banker Thelusson, where he displayed such a capacity for business, as to lead to his admission into the house as a partner. In a few years he acquired a large fortune, and withdrew from active business, but remained at Paris as minister of the republic of Geneva to the French court. ”

“ Nevertheless, when they met again in Paris some years later, Mademoiselle Curchod, then married, welcomed Gibbon with kindness, and even wrote him notes containing, here and there, allusions to the past. For the age was eminently sentimental, and to cherish memories of vanished joys, and make passing, pathetic reference to them, was a luxury of which Madame Necker would have been the last to deprive herself. ”

“ By the time that the King of Poland's bonne maman wrote that little note to Madame Necker, the wife of the Genevese banker had founded a salon as brilliant and crowded as Madame Geoffrin's own. She had achieved this in a few years, whereas Madame Geoffrin for the same task, and in spite of her wealth and generosity, had required a quarter of a century. ”

“ Il y a six ans que l'ami de Madame Necker fut reçu à Paris, comme celui de George Deyverdun pourroit l'être à Lausanne. Je ne connois rien de plus flatteur que cet accueil favorable d'un public poli et éclairé. Mais cette faveur, si douce pour l'étranger, n'est-elle pas un peu dangereuse pour l'habitant exposé à voir flétrir ses lauriers, par la faute ou par l'inconstance de ses juges? Non; on se soutient toujours, peut être pas précisément au même point d'élévation. ”

“ Necker, in the summer of 1784, at a country house near Lausanne, where he composed his Treatise on the Administration of the Finances. I have since, in October 1790, visited him in his present residence, the castle and barony of Copet, near Geneva. Of the merits and measures of that statesman various opinions may be entertained; but all impartial men must agree in their esteem of his integrity and patriotism. ”

“ The young are apt to think their parents superior to the rest of the world. The claims which M. and Madame Necker possessed to real superiority, from their virtues and talents, naturally added to the warmth of their daughter's affection. The distinction in which they were held made the path of her life bright; and even the first check that occurred in her father's career tended to excite still more her admiration for him, as opposition gives form and strength to every power exerted to overcome it. ”

“ There were two very obvious reasons, if not more, why Necker should wish to keep him caged. First, imprisonment might induce him to break his silence as to the Brotherhood's place of meeting and as to what names his eye had caught during the signing of his own to the list. Secondly, his disclosure, with every attendant circumstance, might be suspected of being a ruse to gain favor, similar to that by which Latude had brought well-nigh a lifetime of captivity upon himself; for men who devise such ruses are to be held as dangerous. ”

“ Very sensitive, yet very submissive, and quite incapable of resentment, Germaine threw herself with characteristic passionate ardour into the task of winning her mother's praise. How complacently Madame Necker must have accepted the homage implied in these efforts, it is easy to imagine. A little contempt for the child's impetuosity helped to give her the firmness necessary for moulding, according to her own notions, the nature so plastic, yet so vital, thus placed within her grasp. ”

“ While, among the famous salon leaders of the eighteenth century, Mme. Necker stands out preëminently for her strict moral integrity and fidelity to her marriage relations, Mme. d'Epinay is unique for the constancy of her affections for the men to whom she owes her celebrity, Rousseau and Grimm. Born in 1725, the record of her life runs like that of most French women. ”

“ Your own friend agrees with me!" exclaimed Necker.
"You don't think that, Andie?" Welkie, puzzled, stared at Balfe.
"What I mean, Greg, and what Mr. Necker very well understands me to mean, is that surely there are hordes of people who never will believe [40] that any man did anything without a selfish motive." ”