region, Baron Capelle. Capelle would have had little to learn from the methods of modern
totalitarian régimes: not only was Germaine kept under permanent surveillance as usual,
she was also urged by him to write a work in praise of her tormentor, the Emperor. Her
inevitable refusal was then publicized by Capelle in order to blacken her name still
further.^61 She was confined to within a radius of 2 leagues of the château, and the devoted
August Wilhelm von Schlegel was ordered to leave. Although Capelle probably did not
know it, Schlegel was not all that sorry to be going, since he had taken umbrage at
Germaine’s latest passion, John Rocca (1788–1818), who was something of a rough
diamond when compared to her many other conquests. Despite his English Christian
name, Rocca was of Piedmontese origin and from Geneva: it was there that she had met
this handsome 23-year-old hussar when he had been recovering from a wound he had
received in Spain in the Emperor’s service. He had beautiful brown eyes, was slight of
build and walked with the aid of crutches because of his injury. His experiences in the
Peninsular Wars had aligned his feelings about Napoleon with those of Germaine. Rocca
was uncultivated and quick-tempered, and idolized the woman he was set on marrying.
Young and probably consumptive, he made an odd but rather touching match for
Madame de Staël, now in her mid-forties, aware not only that she was losing her looks
but also putting on weight. She was greatly flattered by his attentions, even though he
was quite incapable of understanding most of her intellectual enthusiasms. She invited
Constant to supper at Coppet on 18 April 1811, and Rocca, who could not bear the sight
of her obvious affection for him, challenged Constant to a duel.^62 Despite the absurdity of
the situation, Constant who, as we have seen, was never a coward when it came to
physical combat, accepted the challenge from an experienced military man half his age.
Fortunately the affair was settled honourably without bloodshed the following day, but
Rocca remained intensely jealous of his Venus’s former lover, and was to challenge him
yet again in May when Germaine slipped away to Lausanne to bid Constant farewell on
his departure for Germany. Once more the young hothead was persuaded to drop his
affair of honour, and was subsequently rewarded by secretly becoming Germaine’s
second husband.^63
At about this point, and very significantly, on 15 May 1811 Constant’s Journaux
intimes begin again after a long silence with his departure from Lausanne, and they run
through to 1816.^64 At 11 a.m. on 8 May 1811 on the staircase of the Hôtel de la Couronne
in Lausanne Constant had said farewell to Madame de Staël: she had told him she did not
expect that they would ever see each other again. The next day he had written to Claude
Hochet:
People judge [Madame de Staël] more severely than she deserves,
and she enjoys less pleasure than she thinks. Everything to do with
her, now that my life is beyond her control, is a source of deep
melancholy to me and it is the only sadness to trouble my life
which from other points of view suits me more and more as each
day passes.^65Benjamin constant 210