Even in this Platonic correspondence, however, Gibbon, with a prudence beyond his years, seems to have scented danger. 'Mademoiselle,' he wrote, 'must you be for ever pressing upon me a happiness which sound reason compels me to decline? I have forfeited your love. Your friendship is left to me, and it bestows so much honour upon me that I cannot hesitate. I accept it, mademoiselle, as a precious offering in exchange for my own friendship, which is already yours, and as a blessing of which I know the value too well to be disposed to lose it. 'But this correspondence, mademoiselle, I am sensible of the pleasures which it brings me, but, at the same time, I am conscious of its dangers. I feel the dangers that it has for me; I fear the dangers that it may have for both of us. Permit me to avoid those dangers by my silence. Forgive my fears, mademoiselle; they have their origin in my esteem for you.' And he proceeded to answer her questions concerning the position and prospects of 'lady companions' in England, expecting, no doubt, that he would hear no more from her. Even then, however, the story was not ended. The most passionate of Mademoiselle Curchod's letters bears a later date. It is the letter of a woman who feels that she has been treated shamefully. If it were not that Mademoiselle Curchod made a happy marriage so very soon afterwards, one would also say that it was the letter of a woman whose heart was broken. One gathers from it that, while Mademoiselle Curchod appreciated Gibbon's difficulty in marrying her while he was dependent upon his father, she was willing to wait for him until his father's death should leave him free to follow the impulse of his heart. In the meantime she reproaches him for having caused her to reject other offers of marriage, and protests that it is not true, whatever calumnious gossips may have said, that, in Gibbon's absence, she has flirted with other men. Above all, she protests that she has not flirted with Gibbon's great friend, M. Deyverdun. Her last words are: 'I am treating you as an honest man of the world, who is incapable of breaking his promise, of seduction, or of treachery, but who has, instead of that, amused himself in racking my heart with tortures, well prepared, and well carried into effect. I will not threaten you, therefore, with the wrath of heaven--the expression that escaped from me in my first emotion. But I assure you, without laying any claim to the gift of prophecy, that you will one day regret the irreparable loss that you have incurred in alienating for ever the too frank and tender heart of 'S. C.' [Illustration: LAUSANNE, LOOKING EAST]