kept the marriage secret in order to stay on at Coppet and improve his
Wallstein with her help and that of her guests.
While all this was happening in Switzerland, Charlotte remained in Paris and seems to
have rallied for a while. Things were beginning to move in her direction at last, and it had
always been in her nature to be patient. Although she was the victim of a whispering
campaign in Paris—she was known as ‘the woman with three husbands’—and although
legal expenses and the yearly allowance she gave Du Tertre^42 had reduced her income,
she was still a wealthy woman. Once her husband had rejoined her the future looked
promising. Only she was able to offer the domestic calm which at 42 Constant now
needed so desperately. There was one small cloud on the horizon, however: Constant had
become jealous of the German doctor and man of letters who was looking after her in
Paris, David Ferdinand Koreff (1783–1851)—perhaps as the result of an idea put in his
mind by Germaine de Staël—and he asked her to leave her rented apartment in the Rue
d’Anjou and return to Brevans. Juste’s gloomy and uncomfortable house had too many
unhappy memories associated with it and she refused. Her counter-proposal was that,
despite the dangers of travel in a war-ravaged country, they should leave for Germany.
They could both be happy there. Germaine de Staël—whose power and influence,
supported by considerable wealth, Constant had always feared—was a continuing threat
as she intrigued, spread calumny and planned her revenge. As a result he was being
pilloried in the gossip of fashionable circles as the man who betrayed his wife with his
mistress and his mistress with his wife. Madame de Staël even sent Juste de Constant the
document promising fidelity to one another which she and Constant had drawn up many
years before, and she was triumphant when the old man replied that he could not decide
between the two women in his son’s life. She later promised to see if she could give some
financial help to Juste’s children by Marianne, Charles and Louise. Juste could no longer
be relied on to stand by him, as Constant now realized.^43
Constant left Coppet on 19 October 1809 and went via Brevans to Paris. After five
months apart there was at first considerable tension between husband and wife. Sharp
words as well as letters were exchanged. Then there was peace. They went through a civil
marriage ceremony in Paris in mid-December 1809^44 and spent the subsequent weeks at
Les Herbages, with regular visits to the capital. Constant began to get to know his
extensive new family: Charlotte’s cousin, for example, Count von Fürstenstein, who was
minister to King Jerome of Westphalia, Napoleon’s younger brother who now ruled over
what had once been Brunswick and Hesse-Kassel. Constant enjoyed the company of the
Count and his wife who were in Paris to prepare for the arrival of King Jerome for the
Emperor Napoleon’s forthcoming marriage to Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria.
Constant was also trying to disentangle his finances from Madame de Staël’s, but there
were some unresolved problems. On 27 January he left Paris, visited his father who was
ill at Brevans (and now thoroughly won over to Madame de Staël’s cause), and by 1
February 1810 was back in Switzerland with Germaine, having promised Charlotte he
would return to Paris in a fortnight. Now that their marriage was official and public,
Charlotte became fearful of scandal, not only in France but also in Germany, especially in
Kassel to which the von Fürstensteins would shortly return—Kassel was a major centre
of social life in the region and much frequented by the von Hardenbergs and their circle.
Her worst fears were confirmed when Constant failed to reappear in March. Apart from
trips to Lausanne and Geneva he was not in fact to leave Coppet until 10 April.
Benjamin constant 206