as possible from both him and the equally unreliable Lamoignon. There
she began copying out all his letters with the intention of returning the
originals to him so that he could be confronted with the evidence of his
treachery.
Constant returned to Paris on 23 May 1801, while Anna remained in Amiens, feeling
guilty at the effect of her feelings for Constant on Lamoignon. At this point Julie Talma
tried to play the honest broker between her two warring friends. Anna issued an
ultimatum through her on 28 May:
Ask Benjamin whether he wants me to admit [to Lamoignon] that I
love him [Constant], whether he wants to give up everything for
me. Without being false or hypocritical I shall then ask Auguste [de
Lamoignon] to end our relationship, and I shall not return to Paris
until he has accepted.^10It was to be Germaine or Anna, but not both, and Anna’s affair with
Constant was at an end until a decision was made in her favour. Faithful to
his usual policy when faced with two alternatives—that of choosing
both—he refused to give any such undertaking in his letter to Anna of 31
May,^11 saying that they should both retain their independence but remain
friends. He thereupon left Paris for Hérivaux, saying that he could no
longer face being in a city where everything reminded him of the woman
he was losing.
Anna’s pride thus left her in the most invidious position possible: remaining the
mistress of a married man who had become reconciled with his wife, or losing the man
she loved to Germaine de Staël. And Constant’s unwillingness to leave Germaine lost
him a woman he still passionately loved and desired. In early June he received the
following lines from Anna:
Now receive my eternal farewell.... It remains for me now to begin
a new life. I hope that in a few days I shall be calm enough to set
out in a new direction. I shall never see you again.... Give yourself
over to that tender friendship which you have no desire and feel no
obligation to give up, and which I would not have asked you to
sacrifice if you had remained only friends [i.e. with Germaine].
Naturally I wanted you to finish with her, but it would have been
enough to know you had done so if you did not accompany her to
Geneva this year and did not live in the same house as her this
coming winter. But that was more than you could manage, and I
was not worthy of such an effort. I would refuse it now if you
offered to make it.^12The intermittences of the heart 177