which in his impatience he now found tedious. They were seen together at dinners, at the
theatre, at balls. At the height of their affair, on 14 December 1800, Constant wrote a
letter to Anna full of praise of her. She had remained pure in a world of corrupt men, and
her lofty, noble and generous nature was unsullied:
For me you are more than a mistress and more than a friend. You
are the only person my heart desires and the only one who can fill
my imagination. You are are everything that is pure, noble and
good.... I love you with my whole soul because I understand you,
because I am like you, because I too have travelled through life
alone, relying only on my strength of character in the midst of the
battles I have fought and the failings I have been accused of.... I
love to see you, hear you, make love to you because you are the
object of my love, respect and veneration. What you need is your
independence, you can be sure of everything else. Be patient just a
few more days and you will reach your objective. You will only
find peace of mind and the sympathy of others when unnatural ties
with people who are unworthy of you [i.e. with Lamoignon] no
longer impose a state of agitation on you.^4Anna had translated an English novel, Marcus Flaminius (1792) by
Cornelia Knight which was set in Imperial Rome, and Constant searched
for a publisher for her. (When Buisson published it in 1801, Constant took
the credit for having contacted him.) On 28 December Constant wrote to
Anna: ‘Remember that each hour that passes brings nearer our complete
and eternal union, that in a few months we will be united for ever.’
5
It
seemed that nothing could now stand in the way of their relationship
becoming a permanent one, each having found the perfect partner in the
other. In the same letter, however, Constant explained that he would have
to spend part of the evening with ‘her’ so as to counter ‘her perpetual
complaints’. ‘She’, of course, was Germaine, who had returned to Paris.
It is tempting for the biographer to see in Anna Lindsay Constant’s greatest lost
opportunity for happiness, a chance missed out of weakness or cowardice or some deeper
flaw of character on his part. Tempting but perhaps wrong. There is in fact a parallel here
with our response to his novel Adolphe. There can be little doubt that the character of
Ellénore owes a great deal to Anna Lindsay: her Catholicism, her foreignness (Ellénore is
Polish), her sense of being worthy of something better than what fate has given her, her
passionate and impetuous nature, even the two illegitimate children she has had by an
aristocrat whose attitude towards her is rather condescending. Adolphe likewise
resembles Constant in his two most characteristic traits: an obsession with himself and
his own welfare, and a passionate desire for independence, the two factors raising
insoluble dilemmas for him in the course of his relationship with Ellénore. The problem
of comprehending why Constant eventually left Anna is akin to that of understanding
The intermittences of the heart 175