supper with them. Constant’s final remark is very positive: ‘I know of no one in the
world who has as much gaiety, subtlety, strength of mind and breadth of thought as
Goethe.’^62 Goethe’s own comment on Constant, written in 1822 in the light of Constant’s
subsequent political career, was to be no less appreciative:
I spent many instructive evenings with Benjamin Constant.
Whoever recollects what this excellent man accomplished in [later]
years, and with what zeal he advanced without wavering along the
path which, once chosen, was for ever followed, realizes what
noble aspirations, as yet undeveloped, were fermenting within
him.^63On 1 March 1804 Madame de Staël and Constant left Weimar for Leipzig,
travelling through snow storms and atrocious weather. They arrived two
days later and stayed for a week. Once again Constant found scholars with
whom he could discuss questions relating to his research on religion.
Germaine went on alone to Berlin where she received a triumphal
welcome, while Constant returned to Weimar to be with some of the
friends he had made there, not least Schiller and Goethe (10–18 March
1804). His ultimate intention was to make for Geneva where he might
meet Charlotte again: during the whole of his stay in Germany Constant
had been in correspondence with her, and had received warm and
encouraging replies. Not for one minute had Charlotte forgotten him—
though he might have forgotten her—and her hopes of their being together
again one day had never been extinguished. In the meantime Constant
spent evenings in Weimar with Sophie von Schardt (1755–1819), wife of
an official at the ducal Court, with whom he seems to have had a brief
flirtation,^64 and on 17 March attended the first night of Schiller’s Wilhelm
Tell with Goethe, which Constant found somewhat chaotic and inferior to
his other plays.
65
On 18 March he set out for Geneva, knowing that he was
leaving behind friendship and hospitality for a very uncertain future.
The journey back took Constant through Gotha, Fulda, Frankfurt and Ulm where on
31 March he spent the day with Ludwig Ferdinand Huber and his wife. En route he had
plenty of opportunity to take stock of his life, coming to the conclusion that only writing
could bring him lasting contentment. As far as ‘Minette’—Germaine—was concerned,
the diary entries show him to have been far less decided. When he reached Lausanne on 7
April 1804 he was informed that Germaine’s father, Jacques Necker, had been taken ill.
As he prepared to go to see him, Constant learned to his great shock that Necker was
dead. Germaine had always had the closest of relationships with her father, Jacques
Necker had treated Constant like a son-in-law, and Constant had great affection and
respect for him. If Madame de Staël were alone in the depths of Germany when she
received the news, in exile and without the support of a friend, her grief and despair
The intermittences of the heart 185