make speeches and preside in Luzarches at the extraordinary fêtes of which the
republican calendar was full, such as the Fête of Married Couples, of the Sovereignty of
the People or that of the Fall of the Throne. It may well be that at about this time
Constant finally learnt that his father had married Marianne years before and had kept it
secret from him.^75 This was to have serious financial consequences for him, since
eventually Juste would have to provide for Benjamin’s half-brother Charles and half-
sister Louise. Altogether it was not proving a good summer for Constant, who must more
than ever have felt that his life was leading nowhere.
Constant needed a focus elsewhere, in his work. In common with Isabelle de
Charrière, he had become interested in William Godwin and probably from September or
October 1798 until January 1800 worked on a translation of his Enquiry concerning
Political Justice (1793).^76 Constant shared some, though not all, of Godwin’s views
expressed in a work which at its publication had been considered dangerous and
incendiary, notably Godwin’s belief in human perfectibility—the notion that mankind is
capable of improvement and is gradually doing so—and his profound libertarianism.
Madame de Staël was working on her essay Des circonstances actuelles about the current
political situation, and it may be that Constant collaborated with her in its composition,
although this is by no means certain.^77 At the end of October 1798 the couple left for
Switzerland where Constant dealt with financial matters and continued to work on his
translation of Godwin. They visited Constant’s cousin Rosalie in Lausanne, who reported
to her brother Charles on 4 December 1798:
In all that [Madame de Staël] and our cousin say about France one
can see that everything is going very badly there, although it is not
their design to discredit it. They assure us that all will go much
better for our grandchildren, that they will profit by all our
misfortunes. That is no consolation to me.^78Constant also spent two days with Isabelle de Charrière, around 20–21
November 1798 and again in January 1799, reading her works and telling
her that while translating Godwin he had discovered the Enquiry to be
‘mediocre, that is full of commonplaces’.
79
(In fact the translation would
never be published in Constant’s lifetime and was destined to remain in
manuscript until 1972.^80 ) He returned to Hérivaux in early February 1799
and resumed his republican duties in Luzarches, but larger political
projects were on the horizon. With the support of Madame de Staël he
now planned to stand for election as deputy for Geneva, which had
recently been annexed by France: he did research into his ancestral
connections with the city in order to strengthen his claim to be its
representative. He was unsuccessful once again.^81
At the same period Constant’s friendship with and admiration for Emmanuel-Joseph
Sieyès (1748–1836), the former pamphleteer and now one of the Directors—or members
of the Directory—was at its strongest: foreseeing political change in France as inevitable,
Benjamin constant 168