‘virtually insane as a result of repeated attacks of hysteria’.^40 The whole
episode of Constant and Mrs Trevor’s unconsummated passion is a
mysterious and intriguing one in itself, quite apart from the obvious
parallels with Adolphe’s relationship with Ellénore on which so many
critics have commented—the declaration of love to her by letter, love
resulting from an obstacle to be overcome, and so on. It is perhaps worth
asking what it was that kept Constant from taking advantage of this by all
accounts rather scatter-brained woman who was unhappy with her
husband and whom Constant must have known was only waiting for him
to make the first move. Why, indeed, did he set out to make her love him
in the first place? There seems to be something behind this curious passion
cérébrale that Constant does not explain, and which cannot, I think, be
accounted for simply by his desire to be loved, his desire to be the centre
of attention (like Molière’s Alceste with his Célimène in Le Misanthrope),
or even the appetite for sexual conquest.
What may perhaps provide a clue to Constant’s reasons for behaving in a manner
which was extraordinary even by his standards is an interlinear addendum to Ma Vie
which precedes the entry about Mrs Trevor, and which was referred to in Chapter 2. By
the side of the sentence ‘If idleness has disadvantages, it has advantages as well’, which
is itself followed by a preamble leading to a description of Mrs Trevor—‘A new love
came along to distract me’—we read in the original manuscript of Ma Vie: ‘voyage à
Berne et à Zurich, connoissance avec Gibbon. Knecht. Amours grecs de Berne’, that is,
‘Journey to Berne and Zurich. Acquaintance with Gibbon. Knecht. Greek love in
Berne.’^41 It is not, perhaps, surprising that scholars should have shied away from
pursuing this particular line of research, but it is to be regretted. We know absolutely
nothing of Constant’s reasons for visiting Berne or Zurich, but it was odd that he should
stay in Berne, a city whose government he held in abhorrence, and stranger still that the
great Edward Gibbon (1737–94) should also be there, as it seems he was. Gibbon had
settled in Lausanne in 1783, he was a friend of Constant’s uncle, Salomon de Charrière
de Sévery, and appears to have become a friend of Mrs Trevor some time after July
1786:^42 he and Constant had every opportunity of meeting in Lausanne. And yet they
seem to have met in Berne, of all places, probably before August 1786, at about which
date Constant made his declaration of love to Mrs Trevor. It does not seem that they
became close friends, indeed the following year when Gibbon took a greater interest in
Constant’s considerably less gifted but more modest cousin, Wilhelm de Charrière de
Sévery, Constant could not conceal his jealousy and showed it in spiteful comments on
Wilhelm’s command of English.^43 It may well be that Gibbon found Benjamin to be a
rather tiresome coxcomb, forever polishing up an epigram in order to impress: indeed
Gibbon had already taken a strong dislike to his father Juste when he had met him on 26
September 1763, and had noted in his Journal:
I spent the afternoon at Madame Grand de St Laurent’s at her
invitation and there I played cards with Catherine Crousaz andBenjamin constant 78