]
Nature bestowed on Mr. Necker an ardent passion for glory, without, at
the same time, granting him those qualities required for its pursuit by
direct means. The union of a fruitful imagination with a limited talent,
with which she has endowed him, is always incompatible with those
faculties of the mind which qualify their possessor to penetrate, to
combine, and to comprehend all the relations of objects.
He had probably learned in Geneva, his native country, the influence
which riches exercise on the success of ambition, without having
recourse to the school of Paris, where he arrived about the
twenty-eighth year of his age. A personal affair with his brother, in
which the chiefs of the republic conducted themselves unjustly towards
him, the circumstances of which, moreover, exposed him to ridicule,
determined him to forsake his country. On taking his leave, he assured
his mother that he would make a great fortune at Paris. On his arrival,
he engaged himself as clerk, at a salary of six hundred livres, with the
banker Thelusson, a man of extreme harshness in his intercourse with
his dependants.
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