conversation. The students follow the courses at the University
quite diligently, then they gamble, drink, sing and fight each
other.^68Between 19 August and 2 November 1811 Constant stayed at Charlotte’s
family home, Schloß Hardenberg, just outside the town, then took rooms
in Göttingen itself to be nearer to the University Library, at Jüdenstraße 12
(now the Centralhotel) where the landlord also kept fowl and pigs.^69 In
such rustic surroundings his work suddenly started to proceed rapidly
again, but as always with Constant that process was one of interminable
recasting and rewriting. And gradually—although it was not easy at first—
he was finding acceptance with some members of the University. He met
the aged Christian Gottlieb Heyne (1729–1812), Professor of Philology,
author of a Latin dissertation on Hesiod which had been useful to him, and
of course father of his late friend Huber’s wife Therese. Later he came to
know, among others, Friedrich Bouterwek (1766–1828), Professor of
Philosophy, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840), Professor of
Medicine, Baron Seckendorf (1775–1823) who taught aesthetics, Gustav
von Hugo (1764–1844), a famous Professor of Civil Law, and Georg
Friedrich Benecke (1762–1844), Professor of German Philology and
University Librarian. When reading the writings of Georg Christoph
Lichtenberg (1742–1799), late Professor of Mathematics at Göttingen—
but of course better known as a humorist and satirist—Constant soon
recognized the accuracy of Lichtenberg’s caricatures of the serious and
earnest German academic.
70
News of Napoleon’s unrelenting persecution of Germaine de Staël continued to reach
and upset him: the link was never broken, they corresponded, and Constant missed her.
Life was not as easy as he had hoped with Charlotte: she was undeniably intelligent, but
not always intelligent enough. They quarrelled from time to time, and sheer boredom and
frustration must have played their part in such disagreements: Constant missed the wit
and brilliance of Germaine’s Coppet. At the end of the year he was shaken by a claim for
50,000 écus made against him by Juste, who in late November 1811 sought to have their
private treaty of 20 April 1811 made invalid.^71 Constant was unable to work properly for
a week with the shock. He told his aunt Anne de Nassau in December 1811 that his father
seemed bent on his complete ruin; he would not even have enough left to honour his
obligation towards Germaine under the terms of his will:
What a strange destiny is mine: at the age of 23 I was put in
possession of a fortune I was told was mine. I was prevented from
earning money, which I would have done if I had thought I was
poor. And now at 45 I am asked for money which I had thought IBenjamin constant 212