Visiting Lausanne, she extended the circle of her admirers. Her bright intelligence enabled her to shine as a member of a certain Société du Printemps, and also of a certain Académie des Eaux--a debating club given to the discussion of such problems as 'Does an element of mystery really make love more agreeable?' or 'Can there be friendship between a man and a woman in the same sense as between two women or two men?' Her conduct in this connection was such that her friends warned her that her desire to make herself agreeable to young men was too clearly advertised; but it does not appear that the warning made any impression on her. At all events, she was very successful in making herself agreeable to Gibbon, then a lad about eighteen years of age. 'Saw Mademoiselle Curchod. Omnia vincit amor, et nos cedamus amori,' is one of the early entries in his diary; and we have a picture of Gibbon, at about the same date, from Mademoiselle Curchod's own pen. In middle age--as we can see from his portraits--he was an ugly, ungainly, podgy little man; but it is not thus that he appears in the portrait drawn by the woman who loved him. 'He has beautiful hair,' Mademoiselle Curchod writes, 'a pretty hand, and the air of a man of rank. His face is so intellectual and strange that I know no one like him. It has so much expression that one is always finding something new in it. His gestures are so appropriate that they add much to his speech. In a word, he has one of those extraordinary faces that one never tires of trying to depict. He knows the respect that is due to women. His courtesy is easy without verging on familiarity. He dances moderately well.' So these two naturally--and rightly and properly--fell in love; they must have seemed each other's ideal complements, if ever lovers were. But they were not to marry. The story of their attachment, their separation, and their subsequent Platonic friendship is one of the romances of literature. Gibbon himself has told the story in one of the most frequently quoted passages of his autobiography. His version of it is inexact and misleading; but it must be quoted, if only in order that it may be criticized: