Her father was a Protestant pastor, who educated her. At the age of twenty she had a perfect and intimate knowledge of modern and classical literature. She was tall and handsome, her manners amiable and dignified. Her parents were poor; she was therefore obliged to give private lessons in families. Gibbon, the historian, knew and admired, and even desired to marry her. His father, however, absolutely refused his consent on account of Mdlle. Curchod’s want of means. Having lost both her parents she went to Paris as the companion of a Mdme. de Verenenon, a rich widow. Mdme. Verenenon possessed a suitor, one Monsieur Necker, a wealthy banker of about thirty-two years of age. When M. Necker met the young companion he transferred his affections to her, and they were married in 1764. Their union was a very happy one. Mdme. Necker’s salon was one of the most agreeable and cultured in Paris, her _habitués_ being Buffon, Thomas, St. Lambert, Suard, Marmontel, Saurin, Duclosé, Diderot, D’Alembert, De la Harpe, Guibert, Abbé Delille, Abbé Arnaud, Abbé Morellet, Comte de Creutz, Duc d’Azeu, Marquis de Caraccioli. Her greatest friends were Buffon and Thomas. During her husband’s first Ministry, Mdme. Necker occupied herself particularly with the Paris Hospitals, then in a deplorable condition, and at the moment when the Revolution drove her from France, she was busy arranging a model hospital she had founded at her own expense. She died, aged fifty-four, at Lausanne. She had an only daughter, the celebrated Madame de Staël, born in 1766. The relations of mother and child were, unfortunately, never happy, as the amiable, pious, but rigid Calvinist mother could in no way understand the character or disposition of her brilliant daughter. M. Necker, on the contrary, made his child his friend and companion from her early girlhood, and in consequence a violent jealousy existed between the mother and daughter, which as years went on embittered both their lives, and continued until Mdme. Necker’s death. M. Necker died ten years later, in 1804. NEUFCHÂTEAU, NICHOLAS FRANÇOIS, COMTE DE. Born, 1750; died, 1828. Son of a schoolmaster in Lorraine, Nicholas François was educated at a Jesuit College, where he was known as “the Infant Prodigy.” At the age of fourteen he published a volume of poems and fables, imitations of Ovid, Horace, and Virgil; and was crowned by the Academy of Dijon. Voltaire, then seventy-two years of age, invited the youthful genius to Ferney, and wished to make him his private secretary (1767), but the Comte de Henin, who was the patron of François, insisted upon his _protégé_ leaving Ferney and accepting a post in the magistracy. The town of Neufchâteau solemnly adopted their illustrious young citizen, who from thenceforward added the name of Neufchâteau to that of François.