it traces the gradual development of religious feeling through history and examines the
various outward forms which that belief has adopted and later discarded, a permanent law
of historical change is shown to be operating. Change in all human affairs is inevitable
and to be accepted, in the outward shape of religious belief as in political institutions. But
that change must be gradual and continuous: any sudden attempts at a radical
transformation either in the political or religious sphere is likely to produce a violent
reaction, just as trying to halt all change and bring about fixity and stasis may provoke no
less of a revolt. Throughout history the permanent and precious human instinct to believe
and to sacrifice oneself because of that belief has assumed many outward guises, and has
reached its greatest perfection in modern Protestant Christianity, freed from the
oppressive burden of a priestly caste.^22 Constant could not hope to win many friends in
France with such a book: rationalists would reject it as vaguely mystical and obscurantist;
Catholics and many Protestants would see it as as anti-clerical and devoid of dogmatic
content. That indeed was to be the case. Just as in politics Constant was an instinctive
member of the opposition rather than of government, so on matters of religion he was an
independent and critical voice, a permanent minority of one.
The military operation in Spain ended in September 1823. At about the same period
Constant told a new friend, Jean-Jacques Coulmann—an enthusiastic young liberal
admirer from Brumath near Strasbourg whom he had met in 1822 through Baron
Davilliers^23 and who was destined in his Réminiscences to play Boswell to Constant’s
Johnson^24 —that he was interested in one day returning to the Chamber as the
representative of Alsace. It was an obvious choice of constituency: Constant spoke
German almost as well as he did French, and his life’s work, one might say, had been to
effect some kind of intellectual synthesis between Germany and France. But first he stood
for a seat in Paris in February 1824, and in March was elected deputy. Challenged yet
again about his nationality, he visited Switzerland in April 1824 to collect historical
family documents to prove his claim, and on this last visit of his life he also saw again his
cousin Rosalie in Lausanne.^25 After two months of argument Constant was finally
allowed to take up his seat in the Chamber, and immediately set about launching attacks
once again on the ultra-royalist government. Although parliamentary activity took up
most of his time, the publication of De la religion at the end of May 1824 involved him
in considerable controversy, in particular with the Catholic apologist Baron d’Eckstein
(1790–1861),^26 and on 7 August a third edition of Adolphe appeared in the bookshops
which contained passages which had been left out of the earlier editions, possibly to spare
Madame de Staël’s feelings.^27
Life seemed to be returning to something like normal after the hiatus of 1823, and it
may have been at about this time that he wrote one of the very few letters to Charlotte to
have been preserved. Its tone gives a valuable—perhaps unique—insight into the nature
of their relationship:
[our financial affairs] are not desperate: and there are three courses
we can follow—but we must take one of the three. Lafitte
[Constant’s banker] won’t be placated for ever by polite words, and
if he wanted to he could ruin me completely by suddenly calling in
his loan.Apotheosis 247