taken ill while climbing a staircase at a ball held at Count Decazes’s residence on 21
February 1817, and was left partially paralysed. Thanks to her doctor’s efforts she was
able to leave her bed a month later, but all who saw her knew she was a changed woman.
It was obvious to them, as it was to Germaine herself, that she was dying. As the
paralysis spread—according to Ghislain de Diesbach possibly the result of a disease of
the spinal marrow^26 —she took to a wheelchair. Among her visitors were Chateaubriand
and Madame Récamier: Chateaubriand was shortly to succeed where Constant had failed
and to begin a celebrated liaison with Juliette. Madame de Staël died in her sleep in the
early morning of 14 July 1817. During the later stages of her illness she had refused to let
Constant see her, and he had also sensed a new degree of antagonism towards him among
her entourage, even in Albertine, who had married Victor de Broglie the previous year.
Constant was allowed to sit with the family by her body, but their hostility to him was to
be undiminished not only during the rest of his lifetime but also the rest of the nineteenth
century.
As a final tribute to Madame de Staël, Constant wrote her obituary in the Mercure de
France,^27 and twelve years later composed a longer and more impressive memorial to
her, ‘De Madame de Staël et de ses ouvrages’ (‘On Madame de Staël and her works’),
paying tribute to her long struggle against Napoleon and her dedication to the cause of
political freedom. Despite their having grown apart in recent years, Germaine’s death
deeply affected Constant and revived his despairing sense of futility in the face of the
certainty of death. He wrote to Madame Récamier at the beginning of August 1817:
I am sad and above all indifferent to everything. In vain I urge
myself to get interested in things, it doesn’t work. I am unmoved
either by successes or setbacks. I can’t get angry about those who
are working against me or feel gratitude to those who are on my
side, other than by being forced to do so by my reason. I cannot be
said to be still living.^28That same month he twice failed to secure election to the Académie
française: despite his remarkable powers as a writer and polemicist and the
excellence of his French style, Constant was sadly never destined to wear
the green uniform of one of the Immortels, although he was a candidate
again in 1828 and 1830. Then an opportunity arose for him to return to
active politics during September 1817. The French political scene was by
now divided among the pure diehard royalists, known as the Ultras, who
supported not the King but his brother the Comte d’Artois (and among
whom Chateaubriand was numbered); the political Centre, who supported
Louis XVIII, with Richelieu on its right wing and Decazes on its left; and
then the real Left, supporters of liberal principles and parliamentary
monarchy, who called themselves Independents. It was as a member of
this last group that Constant stood for election, and wrote several
Adolphe 237