His life at Lausanne is faithfully mirrored in his letters, more particularly in his letters to Lord Sheffield. It was at once a luxurious and an industrious life. One fact which stands out clearly is that Gibbon took no exercise. He boasts that, in a period of five years, he never moved five miles from Lausanne; he apologizes for a corpulence which makes it absolutely impossible for him to cross the Great Saint Bernard; he admits that, when he entertained Mr. Fox, he did not go for walks with that statesman, but hired a guide to do so on his behalf. He also drank a great deal of Madeira and Malvoisie. His letters to Lord Sheffield are full of appeals for pipes of these exhilarating beverages. He declares that they are necessary for the preservation of his health, and appears to have persuaded himself that they were good for gout. The consequence was that he had several severe attacks of that distressing malady. Gout or no gout, however, he freely enjoyed the relaxation of social intercourse. He was never tired of pointing out to his correspondents that, whereas in London he was nobody in particular, in Lausanne he was a leader of society. His position there was, in fact, similar in many ways to that of Voltaire at Geneva; though he differed from Voltaire in always keeping on good terms with all his neighbours. To be invited to his parties was no less a mark of distinction than it had been, a generation earlier, to be invited to the philosopher's parties at Ferney. One of the letters tells us how he gave a ball, and stole away to bed at 2 a.m., leaving the young people, his guests, to keep it up till after sunrise. He also gave frequent dinners, and still more frequent card-parties. When the gout was very bad, he gave card-parties in his bedroom. Distinguished strangers often came to see him, and gave Lausanne the tone of a fashionable resort. 'You talk of Lausanne,' he writes, 'as a place of retirement, yet, from the situation and freedom of the Pays de Vaud, all nations, and all extraordinary characters are astonished to meet each other. The Abbé Raynal, the great Gibbon, and Mercier, author of the "Tableau de Paris," have been in the same room. The other day the Prince and Princesse de Ligne, the Duke and Duchess d'Ursel, etc., came from Brussels on purpose to act a comedy.' And again: 'A few weeks ago, as I was walking on our terrace with M. Tissot, the celebrated physician; M. Mercier, the author of the "Tableau de Paris"; the Abbé Raynal; Monsieur, Madame, and Mademoiselle Necker; the Abbé de Bourbon, a natural son of Lewis the Fifteenth; the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, Prince Henry of Prussia, and a dozen Counts, Barons, and extraordinary persons,' etc.