by Charlotte’s father’s veto, but not sufficiently for him to make any irrevocable move to
reclaim her. Nevertheless, he was to recall eleven years later in his Journaux intimes:
I passed through Schmalkalden on my journey from Göttingen to
Switzerland, very much in love with Madame de Marenholtz, now
Madame Du Tertre. I had fallen in love with her again in the
strangest way. I was extremely tired of her when she wanted to
marry me, but as soon as she started to tell me that at her father’s
request she wanted to postpone our wedding, I felt myself once
more in the grip of an overpowering passion. Was it wounded
pride? I don’t honestly think so. But the person who is escaping
from you necessarily looks quite different from the person who is
pursuing you. You would have something very wrong with your
mind if you saw them in the same light.^64Yet by the autumn of 1793 he could tell Isabelle categorically that he no
longer loved Charlotte (letter of 8 October 1793).^65
It was a time for taking stock, and Constant told Isabelle de Charrière on 17 May
1793:
Everything around me lies in darkness, but I must tell you so that
you don’t feel too sorry for me that the horizon is slowly
brightening and I await the most glorious dawn I’ve yet seen. But I
can’t bring myself to tell you about a future that is as yet uncertain,
to describe desirable things which as yet I only possess in my
imagination, or ills which may well not befall me. You may be sure
that one way or another I shall have nothing to reproach myself for;
that a long and miserable experience has convinced me that only
doing good results in one’s well-being, and that to stray from that
path produces pain; that I am struggling with all my strength
against that indifference for both vice and virtue which resulted
from my strange upbringing and even stranger life, and which has
caused me so much sorrow. Since it runs against the grain of my
character, I shall easily overcome it. I am tired of being self-
centred, of mocking my real feelings, of persuading myself that I
no longer love goodness or hate evil. And in fact my affecting to be
worldly wise, deep, machiavellian or listless has not made me any
the happier. Devil take my pride at being world-weary—I am now
going to open my heart to new feelings of every kind, I want to feel
trust, belief, enthusiasm once again, I want my premature old age
which has turned everything around me a uniform grey to give wayThe brunswick years 145