night of 7–8 October in prison with François de Pange, both of them accused of having
spoken in pro-royalist terms.^30 In Constant’s case the accusation was patently absurd.
However, the experience of prison, though very brief, was a valuable one that Constant
never forgot, in particular the shocking contrast between the sound of free people going
about their business in the street outside and the prisoner’s confinement and
humiliation.^31 It can only have reinforced in him the profound love of—and need for—
personal freedom he had always felt.
One major liberation came at last to Constant on 18 November 1795: his divorce from
Minna finally became legal.^32 He had left the Duke of Brunswick’s service and a page
had now been turned in his personal history. Or almost: at the end of the year, according
to Cécile, he received a letter from Charlotte which had taken some months to find him.
The sight of her familiar handwriting gave him a shock, and he sent an affectionate letter
of reply which seems not to have reached her.^33 There were, however, other more
immediate threats to his liberty than Charlotte’s desire to marry him: as a result of his
earlier arrest, his apartment in Paris had been searched;^34 and the whole city was plunged
into a ferment of unrest and uncertainty as the rule of the Directory began in November
- Constant left for Switzerland with Germaine on 20 December,^35 interrupting his
political activities for her sake, and stayed in Lausanne and at Coppet with her until mid-
April 1796. At the end of their stay he was at last rewarded for eighteen months of
waiting and became Germaine de Staël’s lover. It was not physical attraction, but the
slow development of a friendship and real affection between them that had led to this
consummation of all Constant’s wishes. There exists a document, drawn up possibly at
this time to seal the relationship, in which the lovers promise ‘to devote our lives to each
other’, considering themselves ‘indissolubly joined together’ and undertaking never to
contract another relationship. Constant for his part adds:
I hereby state that I am entering this commitment out of heartfelt
conviction, that I know no one on earth as lovable as Madame de
Staël, that I have been the happiest man on earth during the four
months I have spent with her, and that I consider it the greatest
happiness of my life to be able to make the years of her youth
happy ones, to grow old gradually by her side and to reach the end
of my life with the one who understands me and without whom
there would be no interest and no emotion left for me on this
earth.^36During his stay Constant maintained his contact with Louvet and
expressed concern at the activities in Switzerland of William Wickham,
the British government envoy whose job it was to send secret agents into
France among the returning émigrés and to pay them well for their work.^37
This was not only a threat to a France now ruled by the Directory, a
government of which Constant increasingly approved: Wickham’s
activities also risked drawing the neutral Swiss cantons into the European
conflict. Constant also took the opportunity while in Switzerland to visit
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