Benjamin Constant

reached Auxerre on 9 June to find Germaine’s rented château in complete

turmoil. The purpose of his visit was to decide with her whether they were

to stay together. Ghislain de Diesbach in his shrewd and lively biography
of Madame de Staël describes the scene thus:

By 15 June the usual circle of friends had assembled around

Madame de Staël without her finding in them the slightest remedy

for her agitation. There was Don Pedro de Souza [whom Germaine

had met in Italy], Benjamin Constant, complaining all the time and

tormented by his need for a Venus of the streets (a difficult need to

satisfy in a place as remote as this), Elzéar de Sabran [the poet],

[August Wilhelm] Schlegel, jealous of everyone else, and Prosper

de Barante who had come [from Paris] for only twenty-four

hours—which had made Madame de Staël furious. ‘I feel like

raising a little altar to Unreason’, noted Constant ironically, a man

who was no longer capable of being astonished by anything.^88

During July things were calmer amongst this curious ménage of Germaine

de Staël’s lovers, ex-lovers and would-be lovers. Constant went to Paris
(30 June–15 July) to see Fouché in a vain attempt to persuade the

government to revoke the order exiling Madame de Staël from the capital.

He visited Les Herbages briefly, saw old friends—and was to his relief at

last able to visit brothels regularly again, as his diary records. (Despite his

best efforts he had been unable to rid himself of unruly desires at
Auxerre.) On his return he found being exhibited as one of Germaine’s

subservient possessions no longer acceptable. The result on 30 July was:

‘Terrible scene, terrifying, insane. Appalling things said. She is mad, I am

mad. How will it all end?’
89
The scenes lasted until he left for Paris again

on 24 August. In spite of everything he had managed to do some work on
his political treatise, completing a draft of it on 3 August. While in Paris

Constant arranged with Fouché for Madame de Staël to be allowed to live

in Rouen, a rather more attractive prospect than Auxerre, and on 18

September he took up residence there with her, determined to complete his

work on politics. For Germaine there was now the possibility of evenings
at the theatre, and Constant was once again able to find prostitutes to

satisfy his own priapic cravings.
Fully expecting the final defeat of Napoleon by the Prussians in the forthcoming
battle, Constant wrote in English in his diary on 30 September 1806, misquoting
Addison’s Cato: ‘The dawn is overcast, the morning lowers, and heavily on clouds brings
on the day—big with the fate of Cato and of Rome.’^90 In the event it was Prussia that was
to be humiliated at Jena (14 October) as Russia would be in 1807 at Eylau and Friedland.

The intermittences of the heart 193