kind. The only genuine thing about them was the malevolence of
their perpetrators and the stupidity of those who believed them.
(Letter of 30 August 1793^69 )For good measure he went on to deplore the tide of French émigrés now
flooding into Switzerland. Constant defended Huber as if he were another
Mauvillon, and was shortly to begin writing once again in November 1793
on a political theme, composing an imaginary Dialogue between Louis
XVI and the revolutionary leaders Brissot and Marat, although the work
was never finished. (He had recently taken up the threads of his work on
religion as well.) Meanwhile he continued to be dogged by his father’s
legal debacle, and on 13 August 1793 began a lawsuit against a certain
Henri Vrindt, Clerk of the Court working for the Conseil de Guerre who
had been allocated expenses against Juste:
70
the affair, of an extraordinary
and nightmarish complexity, was to drag on into 1795.
Constant the enemy of superstition and despotism found refuge once again from his
troubles in the company of Isabelle, the friend he nonetheless continued to suspect of
being a reactionary. He stayed in Colombier for four months, with some absences, from 2
December 1793 to 5 April 1794. He had at least had the good grace to say to her on 11
November 1793, in a reluctant acknowledgement of political reality: ‘The horrors taking
place in France distress and stun me.... How can I be expected to write when heads are
rolling?’^71 On 31 January he was further shocked to learn of the sudden death of Jakob
Mauvillon, his indispensable friend and guide, the man who alone had made life tolerable
in Brunswick. Constant’s immediate reaction was to plan a Vie de Mauvillon, a biography
which he hoped Mauvillon’s widow Marie Louise (1750–1825) would assist him to write
by providing information. Grief made him ill for a month, and on 29 March he wrote to
his aunt, Anne de Nassau: ‘Since my friend died in Brunswick, all that sustains me is
thoughts about death, and I consider life to be a kind of lingering death, only shorter or
longer depending on the individual.’^72 Meanwhile his separation from Minna was
confirmed on 17 February 1794, and the following month Isabelle, no doubt suspecting
that he now risked losing his compass bearings, suggested that he write an
autobiographical novel: ‘You can describe yourself more or less as you are and you can
say what you have seen and experienced’ (letter of March 1794^73 ). As usual Isabelle’s
advice was sound: at this stage Constant ignored it and did not take up the therapy,
although in the long run writing autobiography and fiction based on his experiences
would become therapeutic acts of central importance in his life.
Just before Constant left for Brunswick to settle his affairs there in preparation for
leaving the Duke’s service, he saw Isabelle de Charrière one last time. He was
moderating his pro-Jacobin position somewhat as the Terror now reached its height. They
discussed recent history, and Isabelle was compelled to see the beginnings of a new
political maturity in her friend, as she confessed in her letter to him of 8–11 April 1794:
These recent days and particularly that evening [3 April] I was
struck by your honest, truthful and impartial good sense. YouThe brunswick years 147