Edward Gibbon had a complex and unhappy personal life. At Oxford he was converted to the Roman church and was consequently sent by his father to Lausanne to be Calvinized. There he fell in love with Suzanne Curchod (later the wife of Necker and the mother of Madame de Stael). His father disapproved and Gibbon reports the outcome in the now famous words I sighed as a lover, I obeyed as a son.