7 September 1814: A day entirely given over to Juliette. She doen’t
yet love me but she likes me. There are few women who can
remain indifferent to my way of being obsessed and dominated by
them. All this is a powerful new source of interest in my life. I can
feel an unaccustomed warmth in my veins.^40He felt guilt at deceiving Charlotte and decided to leave Paris: he was
unable to and found himself slipping into the familiar maelstrom of desire,
indecision and deception that he had no doubt believed he would never
experience again. His journal entries grew longer as each day he was
shaken by conflicting emotions of great force. On 13 and 14 September he
wrote a mémoire to defend Joachim Murat’s right to remain King of
Naples, as Madame Récamier had asked him to: there even seemed to be
the possibility of a post in his service if he would go on a secret mission to
Vienna, where preparations were being made for the Congress of Vienna
on the future shape of Europe. The mission came to nothing because the
government of Naples refused to give Constant the full diplomatic status
he wanted, though the real reason had more to do with his still unrequited
passion: he needed to be with Juliette every day.
For three months, from September until the end of November 1814 he was in a state of
adolescent love-sickness, a fact he himself realized but was powerless to change: he
could not work or concentrate on anything but her, nor could he resolve to leave her and
rejoin Charlotte in Germany. In fact his mind was now set on living in Paris permanently,
and his recent large winnings at the gaming tables enabled him to buy a house, No 6 Rue
Neuve-de-Berry, on 12 November, and subsequently some land around it: as a property-
owner he was legally entitled to vote and perhaps one day to be voted for. He felt that he
had become the slave of a heartless, shallow coquette, like the many other men who had
been captivated by Juliette Récamier’s beauty over the years. Of course, as Françoise
Wagener’s spirited ‘défense et illustration’ of Madame Récamier suggests, Juliette knew
Constant rather too well, had witnessed years of argument and bitterness in his
relationship with Germaine and was not anxious to become seriously involved with him
herself:^41 in all probability she had no real love for him. But it must also be said that she
made no effort to spare his feelings when she encouraged Constant and three aristocratic
rivals, the painter, the Comte de Forbin, the Marquis de Nadaillac and the Comte de
Montlosier to court her simultaneously. Beside himself with jealousy as a result of her
treatment of him, Constant challenged all three of the other unfortunate suitors to duels
on different occasions: Forbin on 27 September 1814 (the matter was settled without
bloodshed), Montlosier on 28 May 1815, who was wounded in the hand (afterwards
combatants and seconds all went off to a restaurant to continue what was ostensibly a
political argument there) and Nadaillac in early August 1815, when the matter was settled
peacefully.^42 Constant’s diary records sleepless nights, panic, tears, elation, anguish,
thoughts of suicide; the word paroxysme frequently marks the sudden resurgence of
passion after fruitless attempts to tear himself away from Juliette. He visited a prostitute
The end of an empire 225