Adolphe’s complex feelings towards Ellénore. In the novel Adolphe and Ellénore believe
that they have much in common: both are somehow marginal to society, restless and
discontented with their lot and looking for an intense and emotionally fulfilling love.
However, this surface similarity hides deep and fundamental differences resulting from
their social positions, their sex and the intellectual disparity between them: above all
Ellénore is as fiercely possessive as Adolphe is fiercely attached to his freedom and
independence.^6 The challenge which Constant’s great novel offers to its readers is to our
sympathy and our intelligence. We are forced to see how a relationship looks and feels
from within—at least from Adolphe’s point of view—and to guard against any easy
apportioning of blame. Likewise with Constant and Anna Lindsay we must resist hasty
judgements or condemnations.
Germaine de Staël’s return understandably brought out Anna’s jealousy and
resentment. Constant’s characteristic response was to ask for time: in the long term they
would be together for ever. He also felt his usual annoyance at any woman presuming to
think that she owned him, an irritation that was to grow stronger apropos of Anna just as
it had alienated him from Germaine, and perhaps from Isabelle before her. As in Adolphe
the impasse was to remain without there being any prospect of a solution until the
passage of time or some unforeseen event or intervention by a third party brought about a
separation: even then that separation was not to be complete. By early January 1801 a
note of acrimony had entered their correspondence, and by 19 January, despite seeing
each other frequently, they were at loggerheads. On that date Constant, while still
referring to their being happy and together for ever at some point in the future and saying
that Anna was his ideal woman, nevertheless made it clear to her that she must not finish
with Lamoignon and that he could not yet finish with Germaine: Anna would be
criticized in society, while Constant’s enemies would rightly be able to charge him with
ingratitude and heartlessness.^7 Anna was devastated, but their affair continued into May
1801.
Constant meanwhile plunged himself into work in the Tribunate, bravely attacking a
proposed law drafted in the aftermath of the failed bomb plot against Bonaparte which
would set up special courts to try suspects. He denounced such courts without juries as
unconstitutional and paving the way for the arbitrary exercise of power. Anna was
present in the public gallery on one occasion to hear his speech on another bill.^8 At the
end of April 1801 she reported to Julie Talma that Constant had asked for another ten
days in which to make up his mind between her and Germaine de Staël:
He doesn’t want to finish with her before she leaves, as if I were
asking him to cause a pointless scene with her.... It’s my future I
want him to guarantee. I want to be sure that he won’t use the time
he claims to be devoting to an old friendship to have arguments
with her that will end with her being infatuated with him again.^9Not surprisingly no decision was forthcoming from Constant, who left
Paris with Germaine de Staël on 19 May for three days on the Marquis de
Lafayette’s estate at La Grange. Anna’s contempt for his weakness and
perfidy now knew no bounds: she left Paris for Amiens to be as far away
Benjamin constant 176