5 THE BRUNSWICK YEARS (1788–1794)
Constant wrote to Isabelle de Charrière from Basle on 20 or 21 February
1788:
I only have time to say a few words to you because I am not
spending the night here as I had thought. The roads are terrible, the
wind is cold and I am miserable, more so today than yesterday. It is
difficult and painful to leave you for a day, and each day adds to
the suffering of the preceding days. I had got so used to the
company of your writing, of your piano (although it annoyed me
sometimes) and of everything that surrounds you, I had got so used
to spending my evenings with you, having supper with the kind
Mademoiselle Louise [Monsieur de Charrière’s sister], that I miss
all of these quiet and cheerful things, and all the delights of bad
weather, an uncomfortable post-chaise and dreadful roads cannot
console me for having left you. Both my physical and moral well-
being owe you a great deal. I have an awful cold, simply from
being shut up in a post-chaise: imagine how much I would have
been suffering if, as my relatives—alarmed at the threat to my
chastity, and more concerned about my continence than my life—
had wished, I had left in the middle of my treatment [for venereal
disease]. So I certainly owe you my health and probably my life. I
owe you more than that, since life is so miserable most of the time,
whatever the Reverend Chaillet [pastor of Colombier] says, and
you made it sweet, you consoled me for the misery of being alive,
of being in company, and of being in the company of Marin,
Guenille & Co. [Marianne Magnin and her friends]. I am
calculating in my post-chaise how much I am in your debt, because
it is a great pleasure to owe you so much and in so many ways. As
long as you live, as long as I live, and wherever I am, I shall always
say, ‘At least there is a Colombier somewhere in the world’.^1Benjamin constant 106