vis his half-brother Charles and his half-sister Louise. He grew especially fond of Louise
d’Estournelles, who herself later became a novelist. Constant’s wife Charlotte Constant,
née von Hardenberg, had a son by her first marriage, Wilhelm, later Baron von
Marenholtz (1789–1865), but Benjamin Constant had no children of his own by either of
his two marriages. There is, however, a strong possibility that he was the father of
Germaine de Staël’s daughter Albertine (1797–1838), later the wife of Victor, Duc de
Broglie (1785–1870). Constant always showed Albertine the greatest affection, but after
her marriage in 1816 they became somewhat estranged, largely as the result of her own
and her husband’s rather puritanical disapproval of Constant’s character and past
conduct.
A note on Benjamin constant's family 3