Benjamin Constant

His looks were the obstacle: he was tall and awkward, with reddish hair,

spectacles with green lenses, small cold eyes and a blotchy, freckled face,

hardly the beau idéal of male beauty. On a brief visit to Colombier with
his cousin Charles, Constant made Isabelle smart with his praise of

Madame de Staël. Despite Charles’s deep antipathy to Constant, his

remarks on the visit in a letter to his family of 8 October 1794 ring true:

B[enjamin] has a different way of talking when he is with Madame

de C[harrière] from with the others. He mixes a degree of emotion

in with what he says. He made her very jealous of Madame de

St[aël]. She is afraid he will abandon her.^12

Perhaps it was the example of Germaine de Staël that was now bringing

Constant round to a more moderate political position comparable with

Isabelle’s own—a backhanded compliment if ever there was one. He
reported to Isabelle:

The French political scene has mellowed to an astonishing

degree.... I see with pleasure the moderates taking a clear

ascendant over the Jacobins.... I can feel myself growing more

moderate, and it would need you to suggest an innocuous little

counter-revolution now for me to return to the high ground of

republican principle.^13

Robespierre had been overthrown in July and the Terror had ended; the
Revolution had, in modern terms, taken a swing to the Right, yet Constant

was pleased—Isabelle must have felt bitter to see Germaine receive the

credit for having been correct in her political judgement all along, and

cannot but have suspected the erstwhile republican diehard Constant of

sailing with the wind: she would, of course, have been fully justified. But
the key was in the personality of Germaine, whom Constant now loved

and admired, while at the same time he was slowly moving out of

Isabelle’s life. He struck a deliberately valedictory note in his letter to

Isabelle of 21 October:

Since I have got to know [Madame de Staël] better, I find the

greatest difficulty in not endlessly praising her and in not showing

everyone I speak to how I admire her and am affected by her. I

have seldom seen such a combination of astonishing and attractive

qualities, so much brilliance and right judgement; or anyone so

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