Constant reached Brunswick (Braunschweig) via Göttingen on 2 March 1788. He
found himself in a walled and moated north-German city, still somewhat medieval in
atmosphere with an imposing Gothic Rathaus. One of the favourite occupations of its
inhabitants was walking along the ramparts of the city. There were no less than three
Courts in Brunswick, those of the Dowager Duchess, of the Duke her son and of the
Duchess her daughter-in-law. It was the last two circles in which Constant was
principally to move. The Dowager Duchess Philippine Charlotte of Prussia was
punctilious on matters of form and etiquette, and the atmosphere at her Court was stiff
and formal. Everyone spoke French more or less well, with an accent that Constant was
soon to mock. The Duke, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand, was known as a fine military leader
and a conscientious ruler who, with his able Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Féronce de
Rotencreutz (1723–99), had restored the fortunes of the Duchy after his own father’s
wasteful incumbency. As Gustave Rudler perceptively remarks:
Once again Juste de Constant had aimed high on his son’s behalf;
he was able to—and no doubt did—congratulate himself on having
found him a position with a ruler of such high renown. His choice
was that of a good father, but one who understood very little about
his own son.^4The Duke was a serious and cultivated man with many talents, but the
ability to communicate easily with those who surrounded him was not
among them. His speech was laboured because of his painstaking choice
of words, and he rated the lowliest soldier as of more use than his
courtiers. Although he no doubt regarded Constant as being among those
who were of neither use nor ornament at his Court, he was consistently
kind towards him and Juste, despite Constant’s increasing political
radicalism. Similarly his Minister Féronce, widely read and possessed of
an acid wit, took the young man under his wing, while quietly despairing
at Constant’s inability to organize his life better. The Duchess was of an
entirely different species, being English and by nature informal, a lover of
anecdotes who was outspoken in her views and the terror of her ladies-in-
waiting, whose amorous intrigues she would delight in making public. If
the Duke was to act somewhat out of character in helping one of his least
dynamic and most reluctant courtiers, Kammerjunker Constant, the
Duchess his wife was likewise to do so in her later hostility to Constant
and her loyal defence of her lady-in-waiting Minna von Cramm. But it
was among these ladies-in-waiting that Constant found a friend, an elderly
woman whom he mentions occasionally but never names, who made life
at times tolerable at Court for him.
Constant’s reaction at finding himself in such a milieu was predictable: amused
disbelief at first, then boredom and then the most savage mockery he could muster by
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