To that complex matrix of thought and emotion was to be added another essential
ingredient in Adolphe, the idea of the final separation of death, the most powerful of all
Constant’s obsessions. Julie Talma, who had always given Constant unstinting sympathy
and support, lost her one remaining son Félix de Ségur on 10 February. Grief made rapid
inroads in her own health. By mid-March it was clear that she was dying, and Constant,
appalled at the prospect of being without the most honest and loyal of all his friends,
listed in his diary on 15 March 1805 all those of whom he had been robbed by death—
Jakob Mauvillon, Ludwig Ferdinand Huber, Jacques Necker and most recently the
Marquis de Blacons, a disreputable but amusing companion and habitué of Coppet who
had committed suicide. Then there was the brilliant John Wilde of Edinburgh who was
now as good as dead, having lately lost his reason completely. Constant reflected bitterly
that wherever he walked it was as if it were over the graves of his friends, while his
enemies were all still alive and flourishing. Who was there left to think, write or live
for?^79 To his horror he watched as Julie Talma grew inexorably weaker with the
progression of her illness while her character remained fundamentally unchanged. In a
manner entirely alien to his usual way of thinking, he fell to speculating on whether some
part of a human being might survive death.^80 Julie died on 5 May and was buried two
days later. Constant’s grief was such that he discontinued the detailed journal he had kept
since January 1804 and reverted to an abbreviated and coded form, considerably less
informative than hitherto, for several months to come.
Madame de Staël had proposed a secret marriage which offered the advantage of
ensuring Constant’s financial security and the possibility of being with ‘my delightful
Albertine’, as he called her. Germaine was not only his intellectual equal, able to
understand his work on religion and offer useful comments on it: as he recognized in his
diary entry for 1 May 1805 there was a part of him that was prone to depression, and
Germaine’s company was the only effective antidote.^81 There were, however, enormous
drawbacks to the remedy, not least Germaine’s fearsome temper. Charlotte was the
milder alternative, and indeed she now offered to divorce Du Tertre in Germany and
marry Constant. Constant noted in his diary on 4 May 1805:
She [would bring] me her delightful character, a degree of
intelligence—more indeed than I had thought, a distinguished
family, enough money for me to be no poorer married to her than I
am now, and an attachment to me that has survived ten years of
separation as well as my own indifference.... Heaven has shown
me an unexpected haven in Charlotte: I must make for it.^82But the shock of Julie’s death inevitably made an early reunion with
Germaine more likely now that she had returned from Italy. Charlotte left
for Germany to spend some time with her relatives, and in July 1805
Constant travelled to Geneva with Claude Hochet and Prosper de Barante
(1782–1866), all three friends involved in journalism and sharing a
passionate interest in politics and history. They reached Coppet on 10
July. Once more Constant slipped back into a repetition of the kind of life
Benjamin constant 190