no doubt broached with the Tsar. While she was in St Petersburg, Napoleon’s army had
taken Smolensk and was about to occupy Moscow: Madame de Staël now crossed to
Sweden and by 24 September she was in Stockholm where she put herself, her family and
even Schlegel at the service of Prince Bernadotte’s cause. She is credited by historians
with having had some small influence in bringing about Sweden’s alliance with England
and Russia to form the 1813 coalition against France.^4
Compared with such a life as Germaine’s, Constant’s existence was humdrum indeed
during 1811–12. Never before had he worked so uninterruptedly, while thinking all the
time of ‘la voyageuse’—the nomadic Madame de Staël—and praying for her safety. God
in fact makes a frequent appearance in his journal at this period for the first time:
Constant’s brief daily observations often contain the abbreviation ‘L. v. d. D. s. f.’, ‘La
volonté de Dieu soit faite’, ‘God’s will be done’, a memory of the passively fatalistic
outlook of the Mystiques of Lausanne which had so marked him during 1807. When he
attended a student supper party on 14 January he felt with regret that he was growing old,
and when on 8 January he had opened his ‘novel’ again—by which he probably now
meant Adolphe—he remarked: ‘How one’s impressions fade when circumstances change!
I should no longer be able to write it today.’^5 The following November his reaction was
very similar: ‘Read my novel. I am amazed at myself (diary entry for 9 November
18126 ). Constant’s feelings about his new place of residence were somewhat ambiguous.
Göttingen was rather too remote and primitive for his taste: only the sophisticated
company of Charles de Villers made it tolerable. And yet his work was profiting
enormously from his stay there. On 11 November 1811 he had been invited to an
academic reception, and he became a member of the Gelehrten-Club at some point during
his stay.^7 This was a drinking and dining club for academics which seems to have met
every week or fortnight. More significant was his being nominated on 14 December 1812
as a Corresponding Member of the Academy of Sciences of Göttingen on the
recommendation of his friend the Professor of Medicine Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.
He wrote to his aunt Anne de Nassau on 20 April 1813:
I have not received recognition from the University, but from the
Göttingen Academy of Sciences. It is only an honorary title which
the scholars here have been kind enough to bestow on me; it brings
me no stipend and I am not obliged to do anything on account of it.
I owe my being elected to a book which is not yet finished; I hope
it comes up to the expectations some of them have of it.^8In a letter of thanks to Blumenbach of 23 December 1812 he referred to
his work on religion as ‘the purpose of my whole life and its consolation’.^9
All that summer and autumn he had worked, getting bored with everything
he had (Charlotte), and missing everything he did not have (Germaine),
and feeling he must be mad, as he remarked in his diary on 16
September.^10 In October he and Charlotte moved lodgings, while
continuing to row with each other. He thanked God when he heard that
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