- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, op. cit., pp. 256–7.
- Michel Folman, Le Secret de Benjamin Constant, sa maladie, sa vie intime, Geneva:
Imprimerie de la Tribune de Genève, 1959.
- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, op. cit., p. 260.
- Dorette Berthoud (op. cit., p. 74) quotes an undated parliamentary exchange over
religious affairs which gives a brief taste of Constant’s irony at the expense of a
reactionary régime:
We have heard talk of a settlement reached in Toledo in the seventh
century. And I thought the government was only intending to take us
back to the fifteenth century. It’s obvious that ambition grows with
success. (Laughter).
On sacrilege he had the following to say, in similar vein:
Sacrilege! But what is it? An affront to God Himself, miraculously
contained in the consecrated host, according to the Church of
Rome.... It
is sad, gentlemen, to see the barriers going up again between two
Christian churches to which the general softening of attitudes, the
advances in learning, and the Charte seemed to have brought genuine
concord. But since the language of thirteenth-century Catholic
theologians is now being spoken in this Chamber, I am forced in my
turn to speak that of the leaders of the Reformation to whom your
respect for freedom of worship allows me to express my gratitude. I
owe to those reformers the inestimable privilege of being all the more
persuaded of the truth of our sacred books because they gave me the
right to study the scriptures and to be convinced by them myself.
(Dorette Berthoud, op. cit., pp. 86–7)
36.
C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant to
1833, op. cit., pp. 144–5, item 60.
- Quoted in Kurt Kloocke, op. cit., p. 285.
- On the question of Constant’s possible influence on Karl Marx, see Patrice
Higonnet, ‘Marx, disciple de Constant?’, ABC, no. 6 (1986), pp. 11–16.
- Kurt Kloocke, op. cit., p. 369.
- Norman King et Jean-Daniel Candaux, op. cit., pp. 155–6.
- Benjamin et Rosalie de Constant, op. cit., p. 358.
- On this see Victor Glachant, op. cit., pp. 347–505.
- C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant to
1833, op.cit., pp. 187–9, item 132a(1), Discours de M.Benjamin Constant à la
Chambre des Députés, Tome premier, Paris: Dupont, 1827.
- Ibid., p. 135, item 58b(3), De la religion, considérée dans sa source, ses formes et
ses développements, tome III, Paris: Béchet aîné, 1827.
List of abbreviations 314
