For some time now Constant had felt that his relationship with Germaine de Staël was
becoming a burden to him. Bored and in low spirits after his failure to be nominated, he
let slip the truth when he wrote to Anne de Nassau from Hérivaux on 15 May 1798 and
confided in her:
A tie which I have respected out of duty, or if you prefer out of
weakness, but which I am sure I shall honour until such time as a
more genuine duty frees me from it; a tie which I could break only
by admitting I am terribly weary of it—something I am too polite
to say; a tie which, by plunging me into a world I no longer like
[i.e. salons] and tearing me away from the countryside I love,
makes me profoundly unhappy and greatly threatens the limited
amount of money I’ve managed to acquire only by a miracle in my
nomadic existence; a tie finally that can only be broken by a
massive upheaval which I cannot bring about—this tie has held me
in bondage for two years.
I am isolated without being independent; I am completely
subordinate to her without being at one with her. I see the last years
of my youth slipping away with neither the peace of solitude nor
that sweet affection which comes from a legal union. I have tried in
vain to finish with her. It is not in my nature to resist the
complaints of another human being.... And once this tie is broken I
shall find myself alone again, and that solitude will add to the pain,
genuine or false, that people will say I have caused. To console
myself I need to make someone happy.^70All the pain of Adolphe’s dilemma is already present in this letter, the
inability to take decisive action, the fear of causing pain, the sense of life
slipping by. In the same letter Constant asks his aunt to look for a suitable
wife for him, just as the fictional Adolphe will long for a calm and steady
relationship in marriage after his burdensome relationship with Ellénore
has ended. In June Constant’s father suggested that he marry his cousin
Angletine de Sévery: she would also make him financially secure with her
dowry.^71 It was to come to nothing.
By the end of June Germaine was back at Hérivaux and Constant felt guilty at his
plans for an ‘insurrection’, as he told his aunt Anne de Nassau. Such ingratitude would
only lead to painful regrets in the future (letter of 28 June 1798).^72 Face to face with
Germaine, as he had foreseen, his resolution crumbled—indeed by Christmas 1798 there
was to be talk in Lausanne of her divorce and marriage to Constant. Constant’s finances
stood to benefit handsomely, as Madame de Charrière told Huber that December.^73 He
now retreated into study, took up the threads of his book on religion, long since laid
aside, and at Isabelle de Charrière’s request no doubt read her new novel Trois femmes.^74
Despite a feud with the local Catholic priest, Father Oudaille, Constant also continued to
Germaine de stael 167