and in Adolphe there is a clear echo of him in the enlightened ruler of the
fictional German state who resides in the city of ‘D***’. Germany was
also the place where, as Constant knew, some of the most advanced
research in Europe was being undertaken in his own chosen field, the
history of religion, and indeed he found to his dismay that a book he had
bought—probably Johann Heinrich Voss’s Mythologische Briefe—had
already arrived independently at conclusions that were the fruit of ten
years of his own private investigations dating back to his Edinburgh days.
It was a jolt that only strengthened his resolve to study more extensively
and deeply.^77
Perhaps the memory of Mauvillon drove Constant harder, for during this last long stay
in Brunswick (25 April–8 August 1794) he had frequent conversation with Madame
Mauvillon to help him in writing his late friend’s biography. He worked many hours a
day on his study of religion, using the library of the Große Klub of which he was still a
member, and wrote to Langer, librarian at Wolfenbüttel, with the intention of visiting the
Herzog August Bibliothek.^78 By 23 May he was able to inform Isabelle: ‘I am working
hard on my magnum opus, and it’s coming along well. There are thirty-seven chapters
written of which I’m not displeased, but it’s hellishly difficult. The Life of M[auvillon]
will come afterwards.’^79 By 21 July it was 600 to 700 pages long, he revealed to Isabelle,
‘and that’s just the first part. I intend to finish it in the next year, and publish it in order to
test whether my readership likes it, which consists of a few philosophers scattered here
and there, friends of tolerance and liberty. What happiness! What a constant quiet source
of enjoyment! What a delight it is to study!’^80
He was now persona non grata to most of the Court, with the exception of the Duke
and Féronce, and kept well out of the way, deliberately leading a hermit-like existence
while preparations were made for his divorce proceedings. In his diary entry for 17 July
1804 he remembered the contrast, misjudged and despised by many people ‘and yet
perfectly happy in the midst of all that. My means of finding happiness were quite
simple: I was alone and I was working.’^81
Nevertheless he was unable to avoid seeing Minna and Charlotte’s husband. Curiously
Charlotte had taken under her wing Caroline, the actress with whom Constant had had a
passionate affair shortly before he had met her, and who had fallen on hard times: she
was to take great interest in the other women in Constant’s life in later years—a mark of
both her devotion to him and her extraordinary tolerance. Nevertheless she twice refused
to see Constant himself,^82 although she never stopped loving him and appears to have
sent him a number of undated letters during this period. Later, on 11 May, she invited
him to meet her, but this time it was Constant who refused, fearing that she might commit
some extravagance such as insisting that they elope there and then (letter to Isabelle de
Charrière of 12 May 1794).^83 Shortly afterwards she wrote to tell him that she was on the
point of obtaining a divorce from Wilhelm von Marenholtz, who was to take Caroline
von Bothmer as his third wife that August. Charlotte then left for Hamburg:
She has written me an eight-page letter of self-justification...in
which she informs me that she is renouncing me for ever, but sheThe brunswick years 149