Benjamin Constant

Neuchâtel, where he was treated for a venereal infection by Dr Joseph Deleschaut, visited
Isabelle de Charrière at Colombier, and the duel finally took place on 8 January 1788,
with Monsieur de Charrière as Constant’s second: he was wounded in the nipple, Du
Plessis in the knee, and the matter was honourably concluded.^32 During the two months
that he underwent treatment for what was probably gonorrhoea (c. 10 December 1787–10
February 1788) he was happy to be away from his family and in all probability wrote the
unfinished epistolary novel Lettres de d’Arsillé fils in collaboration with Isabelle de
Charrière which seems to be a veiled self-portrait depicting the difficulties his personality
had caused with his uncle Samuel and his cousins. There is circumstantial evidence,
indeed, to suggest that this novel may have been a reworking of the Lettres Ecrites de
Patterdale of the previous summer: it was not to be published until 1981.^33 Meanwhile
Constant learned that his family suspected that he was having an affair with Isabelle de
Charrière—something he was, of course, currently incapable of. Annoyed and all the
more determined not to change his plans, he stayed on, gambling away some of his
money in Neuchâtel and resuming his work on ancient Greek religion. As Madame de
Charrière would recall in later years:

On the other side of the same table [Constant] was writing—on

tarot cards which he intended to string together—a work on the

spirit and influence of religion, of all known religions. He never

read any of it to me, reluctant like myself to expose himself to

criticism and mockery.^34

Finally, after returning to Lausanne he set off for the north of Germany on

17 February 1788, with his father privately expressing his fears to his
brother Samuel:

It is certain that if my son wishes to ensure a comfortable future for

himself, he can do so, but I am not without my fears on that

subject, and I am afraid of seeing him come back poorer than he

leaves. He thinks he is a rich man whose wealth is inexhaustible,

but he needs to know and understand how short of money I really

am.^35

A taste for ruinous gambling and risky sexual adventures, intellectual
arrogance, political radicalism, a fiery temper—these, then, were some of

the benefits soon to be bestowed on Duke Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand’s

Court in the person of the young Constant. It is perhaps no accident that

the uncompleted picaresque narrative of the delightfully witty and self-

mocking Ma Vie ends at about this point in Constant’s career, with the
duel with du Plessis. He must have perceived the end of 1787 as a natural

fault line running through his life when he later came to compose his

autobiographical narrative in around 1810–11, a line that separated the

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