Benjamin Constant

soon bypass representative institutions completely, and culminate in the reestablishment
of a dynasty. In such a political climate, Constant’s spirited and barbed interventions in
the Tribunate sounded increasingly like those of an unreconstructed Jacobin, especially to
the man who now ruled France and believed that he embodied the will of the people. In
January 1802 Bonaparte therefore saw to it that Constant was expelled from the
Tribunate, together with a number of other troublesome colleagues, although Constant
continued as a tribune until 21 March 1802.^22 Constant had written on 14 January to tell
Isabelle de Charrière about what was going to happen, and she reported it gleefully to
Constant’s friend Ludwig Ferdinand Huber on 26 January:

It was a sensible letter and written in quite a noble style, that is to

say he was showing he was a man of moderation and too high-

minded to be affected by his downfall. I suppose that by now the

tribune is no longer a tribune. Madame de Staël will not love him

any the more for it.^23

She was to be even more cruel on 12 February 1802 in a further letter to

Huber:

Constant must now have woken up from his dream, during which

he imagined he was a kind of statesman, a man whose talent,

reputation and fate were henceforth linked to the destiny and the

renown of the French Republic.... In France Constant will only

ever be a clever and witty man who is not very highly thought of

generally. The French are too distrustful of foreigners, there will

always be too many competitors in France, and that will ensure that

outsiders like him will always be left on the sidelines. The very

word ‘foreigner’ gives ammunition to those who are jealous of him,

to his rivals and to his enemies.^24

For once his father showed more sympathy and understanding, perhaps for

having himself experienced injustice in Holland, and urged him to turn his
talents to writing: that would be the best means of revenge.^25 Even Anna

Lindsay felt mortified for him.^26 In March 1802 when Constant finally left

the Tribunate, he could tell himself that the struggle against tyranny had

been an unequal one, but that he had acquitted himself honourably, putting

behind him the years of career calculation under the Directory.
During the weeks between his expulsion from the Tribunate and his actually ceasing to
be a tribune, Constant had been a guest at a dinner party given on 18 January 1802 at the
home of the widow of the philosophe Condorcet with Julie Talma and General Laclos—
that is Pierre-Ambroise-François Choderlos de Laclos (1741–1803), author of Les
Liaisons dangereuses (1782). The occasion is recorded with tantalizing brevity by
another of those present, the Genevan Etienne Dumont: ‘Dinner at Madame de

The intermittences of the heart 179