which accompanied the French translation of the Italian social theorist Gaetano
Filangieri’s Science of Legislation.^14 It was an opportunity for Constant to restate his
opposition to the eighteenth century’s idealization of the Greek city state and its
institutions. Behind Filangieri was Constant’s old intellectual adversary Jean-Jacques
Rousseau whose concept of the General Will he had always seen as opening the way to a
totalitarian popular democracy where power was concentrated in the hands of the few and
the individual was stripped of all freedom of action, expression or belief.^15 Social
engineering on the part of a legislator figure like the Greek Lycurgus which Filangieri
suggested could open the way to the moral regeneration of society Constant viewed as
leading inevitably to an anachronistic tyranny. Not for the first time Constant seems to
have seen beyond Robespierre and Napoleon to the horrors of twentieth-century
totalitarian states.
The commentary on Filangieri was published on 9 January 1822.^16 The first six
months of 1822 were to prove a period of ceaseless and exhausting conflict in the
Chamber for Constant. The second Richelieu ministry had fallen at the end of 1821, and
an ambitious intriguer, the Comte de Villèle, now presided over what seemed to be a
creeping, if bloodless, counterrevolution. It was indeed the best of times and the worst of
times for Constant: he found fulfilment in being no longer regarded as a political arriviste
but as the great hero of liberalism in France, and his enemies on whom he poured his
brilliant sardonic eloquence were self-evidently misguided reactionaries. Although
hopelessly outnumbered, he had never shrunk from a fight (except, of course, from verbal
ones with women). Indeed in June 1822, though now crippled, Constant fought yet
another duel, this time with the ultra-royalist deputy Forbin des Issarts (1770–1851) after
a public disagreement in the newspapers.^17 Unable to stand, Constant sat in an armchair
and the two adversaries fired their pistols at each other from close range. As a result of
the duel Constant found he had alienated Charles Goyet and members of his constituency
in the Sarthe. His resilience was to be tested still further in August. The ultra-royalist
Villèle attempted to implicate Constant in the Berton plot against the Bourbons. He was
tried and eventually fined. While protesting his innocence, he secretly tried to negotiate
for the conspirators’ lives, offering not to stand at the forthcoming elections if the King
would pardon Caffé, one of the plotters.^18 In the event, Caffé killed himself, Berton was
executed and Constant, who did stand for re-election in the Sarthe in October 1822, was
defeated by a royalist, despite Goyet’s continued support. Constant was still under a
cloud as a result of the trial, and although he was in the middle of an appeal against the
judgement, the circumstances doubtless counted against him in the eyes of the electors.
At the end of 1822 Constant withdrew from what were often the intolerable stresses of
parliamentary life, satisfied in his own mind that his honour was intact. He was now 55,
his hair was turning white, his eyes were weak and no less vulnerable to bright light than
in his younger days, his health was generally poor. He had been effectively a cripple
since his leg injury, despite courses of hydrotherapy involving frequent tiring baths and,
whenever possible, visits to spas. Charlotte was 53 and, to his amusement (and
sometimes his embarrassment), she was growing gradually more absent-minded. As old
age began to weaken Constant’s long resistance to humdrum domesticity, he does now at
last appear to have found some measure of peace and consolation in the company of a
devoted wife, whether when they were in Paris or out at Montmorency. Not surprisingly,
by the end of 1822 he had returned to his manuscripts on religion. However he still had to
Apotheosis 245