would be unendurable. Constant deserves all credit for doing the noble thing: after three
weeks on the road back from Germany he did not hesitate to return there, travelling day
and night, hoping to be with her before she received the news.^66 He reached Weimar at
midnight on 20 April 1804, and broke the news to Germaine when she arrived in the
town on 22 April. Her distress was as intense as Constant had foreseen, and he himself
was physically exhausted from his difficult journey. Nothing however had changed in
their relationship, and Constant felt his longing to be free after nearly ten years with her
more keenly than ever. They discussed their position and neither party expressed the wish
to marry the other: Constant wanted to live apart from Madame de Staël. On 3 May they
set off for Switzerland together via Würzburg and Ulm, where Constant saw the Hubers
once again. Constant and Germaine were accompanied to Coppet by the austere and
dogmatic August Wilhelm von Schlegel (1767–1845), with whom Constant argued all the
way about contemporary German philosophy.
Germaine’s grief was only increased by being in her father’s château at Coppet.
Constant kept out of the way in Lausanne, wrote to Charlotte, worked on Greek religion
and ancient mythology while despairing of ever finishing his book when so far from the
peace and calm of Germany. When as a distraction from her mourning Germaine began
planning a tour of Italy, Constant declined to accompany her, knowing such a trip would
delay his book even further. On 11 June 1804 Constant consulted a Genevan doctor about
his health and recorded the following conclusion in his diary: ‘Butini has confirmed what
I have felt for a long time: that being deprived of women ruins my health. Within the next
six months I must make a suitable arrangement in that regard.’^67 It was, it must be
stressed, not only Constant’s sexual appetite that needed satisfying. He could and did
have frequent recourse to prostitutes, often at this time riding to Geneva for that sole
purpose according to his diary. Nevertheless as he grew older—he was now 36—he
needed more and more a secure, stable atmosphere in which to study without
interruption. That was his ideal: solitude and independence, but with a woman friend
somewhere else in the same house. He did not need another grand passion, but rather the
companionship of marriage. Germaine was unique in being the only woman he knew who
was clever enough to criticize his style and ideas. Her guests at Coppet were a continual
stimulus to Constant’s thought—Schlegel or the historians Charles-Victor de Bonstetten
(1745–1832) and Simonde de Sismondi (1773–1842), for example. Constant always
enjoyed being with Albertine de Staël, now aged 7 (who had, incidentally, now grown to
resemble him even more). There was, however, a permanent shortage of peace and quiet
in the household. Marriage to his cousin Antoinette de Loys—rich, young, beautiful and
agreeable in character—was a possibility, but in July he spent some days in Solothurn
with Julie Talma, where Julie’s son was ill, and there he had reason to reflect on a
marriage he was now grateful to Madame de Staël for preventing—to Anna Lindsay:
[I] have seen a few letters from the woman I used to call ‘my Anna’
two years ago. It is an example of the blunders which my
relationship with Minette has prevented me from making. If it were
not for [Minette], it’s almost certain that I would be burdened down
by that woman and her two children. I would have turned my life
upside down and condemned myself out of a sense of duty to look
after her. I’d have lost everything—my money and myBenjamin constant 186