However, Anna did indeed resemble Constant, as he had remarked in an
early letter to her, to the extent of stopping at his request at Hérivaux on
her return from Amiens to Paris. And when she returned to the capital in
mid-June there was a stormy scene between her and Lamoignon which
resulted in a rift between them.^13 Whatever Constant had said to her—no
doubt out of weakness or to make Anna happy—had brought her to the
brink of disaster, and all he could do afterwards was to advise her to go
back to her ‘protector’ Auguste de Lamoignon. By July she was
understandably in despair, and full of hatred for her tormentor. Julie
Talma wrote to Constant on 9 July: ‘Anna is furious with you. She swears
that she will never go back to Auguste. The surest way to make such a
reconciliation odious to her was for you to advise it.’
14
Meanwhile, in almost comic contrast to these painful dramas, Constant had been
badgered by Isabelle de Charrière over the past few months into taking on a Neuchâtel
boy named Rivière as a copyist.^15 She had also chivvied him into action to find publishers
for the many creations of her seemingly unstoppable pen.^16 Out of touch with his life as
she manifestly now was, she was nevertheless still capable of hitting the nail on the head
when it came to his character, as her remark in her letter of 13 July 1801 shows: ‘I have
noticed that when you express a feeling, it is on the point of disappearing.’^17 Isabelle was
more perceptive than she could have known, not being informed of the imbroglio with
Anna Lindsay. For, despite his reassurances of love, Constant was about to leave Anna
for Geneva and Madame de Staël. He was roundly told off by Julie Talma on 17 July for
mincing his words with her friend and prolonging her agony.^18 That pain was to last for a
very long time, and not in Anna’s heart alone: their correspondence continued
sporadically for many years (despite Anna’s being forced to return to Lamoignon in
September 1801); their passion for each other flared up again from time to time—a
manifestation of what Proust in our own age would memorably call ‘les intermittences du
cœur’—and there were short-lived reconciliations.
Constant left for Switzerland around 19 July 1801. During August he finally sold La
Chablière, and while resuming work on his political treatise, watched from a distance as
Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII negotiated their way towards a Concordat, ratified by the
Pope on 15 August 1801, which would lead to the restoration of the Catholic church in
France. Julie Talma, rationalist and republican, was full of contempt for these
developments.^19 Constant for his part was to find the enormously popular quasi-religious
writings of Chateaubriand not to his taste, although he recognized his talent: Atala (1801)
and the like were all too strong a reminder of how powerfully the current was now
flowing back in the direction of organized religion in France,^20 as Constant discovered on
his return to Paris towards the end of October 1801. In the Tribunate he resumed his
opposition to the wording of bills, objecting also to the speed at which they were being
processed, and in particular on 7 and 8 December 1801 to the highly significant word
‘subjects’ applied to citizens of France in a treaty with Russia.^21 The Revolution had
theoretically done away with that kind of language, but now Frenchmen found
themselves under the personal rule of the First Consul, Bonaparte, who was gradually
increasing his quasimystical appeal to the soul of the French nation in a way that would
Benjamin constant 178