her arm and by the time a doctor arrived he was already recovering.^18 The attempted
suicide by poisoning, whether genuine or bogus, marked a turning point in Constant’s
fortunes, although Germaine was no doubt aware that she had been duped. He gradually
assumed greater and greater importance in the household, in the continued absence of
Germaine’s official lover Ribbing; he even aroused the jealousy of her temporary lover,
the émigré Mathieu de Montmorency. When Isabelle saw Constant again at the end of
April 1795 she found he had altered, as she told her friend Henriette L’Hardy:
He had lunch and dinner here. I find him very much changed.... He
seemed somehow mysterious and self-important and occupied with
weighty matters, and all that has replaced his former cheerfulness,
naturalness and youthful sense of fun.... He has plans for the
future, journeys to make, services to render.
(Letter of 2–5 May 1795^19 )His resignation from the service of the Duke of Brunswick had become
official by early May 1795. The political situation in France had now
returned to something approaching normality under the Thermidorians,
and Germaine judged it was safe to return to Paris. When she left on 17
May Constant was at her side.
In Cécile the narrator describes his impressions on arriving in Paris as Constant did on
25 May 1795:
With all the impetuosity of my character and with a mind that was
even younger than my years I enthusiastically embraced
revolutionary ideas. Ambition took hold of me and I could see only
two things in the world that I wanted: to be the citizen of a republic
and to be at the head of a political party.^20Isabelle was right in seeing a change in Constant. At 27 he had finally
reached where he really wanted to be. He was independent of his father
and at last far from his family and from Switzerland; indeed he was now
centre stage in the only place that mattered for a French speaker, Paris,
and had the determination and ambition to make his mark there. For that
he could thank the woman he loved. Madame de Staël now introduced him
to the political thinkers Barras and Sieyès, and in her salon at the Swedish
Embassy in the Rue du Bac—which soon became an important political
meeting place once again—Constant was exposed to all shades of opinion.
He soon realized how lacking in sophistication his thought was, and began
to listen and learn, as he was to tell his friend J.-J. Coulmann later in his
life, and attended sittings of the Convention every day.^21 He and Germaine
Germaine de stael 157