simultaneous polarization to Left and Right. All spring and summer of 1820 Constant
resisted attempts to muzzle the press and the ‘double vote’ as best he could with brilliant
speeches in the Chamber and at considerable risk to himself as the country appeared to be
drifting towards civil war. He continued to produce pamphlets even as the régime seized
letters he had sent to Goyet during July; then in August he rested for a while at a country
house he was to rent from this period of his life onwards at Montmorency, just outside
Paris. The following month he went to Normandy with Charlotte to visit his electorate in
the Sarthe for the first time in two years, and became the focus of a near riot in Saumur
on 7 and 8 October where he was threatened by officers from the cavalry school. The
incident not only produced a pamphlet from him; it is not impossible that it may also
have inspired an incident in Lucien Leuwen (1834–5), Stendhal’s wryly comical account
of the perils of political ambition.^11
The year 1820 ended as inauspiciously as it had begun with a massive influx of
royalist deputies into the Chamber after elections in November. The only lasting piece of
work Constant had to show for the past twelve months was the first volume of his
Memoirs concerning the Hundred Days, begun in fact in Paris in August 1815 when it
was called Mon Apologie (My Apologia), briefly entitled Lettres à Hobhouse (Letters to
Hobhouse) in 1816, first published in letter form in La Minerve française in 1819–20,
and now appearing as a book. During his stay in London in 1816 Henry Colburn of
Conduit Street who had published Adolphe agreed to publish the Mémoires sur les Cent-
Jours and now generously considered the agreement null and void so that the Parisian
publisher Béchet could bring it out.^12 As André Cabanis and Kurt Kloocke have
demonstrated in their critical edition of the Mémoires,^13 the purpose of the work went
beyond a mere apologia pro domo, a defence of his own conduct in 1815. In its various
editions from 1819–20 up to 1829, Constant took the opportunity to contrast the situation
in France with constitutional arrangements in Britain—now quite unmistakably his
ideal—and pointed indirectly to the dangers posed by the continuing royalist extremism,
vindictiveness and repression. Urging forgiveness and tolerance on the Ultras, he
indicated that Napoleon had failed to win the hearts of the French people in 1815 because
they had not forgotten his suppression of personal freedoms: extreme monarchists bent on
revenge against supporters of the Revolution, Consulate and Empire might now also find
that they were alienating the majority of the nation too.
The year 1821 was to be a little more productive of new work than 1820. Debates in
parliament became heated and unpleasant as the newly reinforced Right attempted to
bury the Revolution of 1789 and its consequences for good. Constant’s eloquence was
marshalled in argument against them, despite a further injury to his leg which rendered
walking more and more difficult. His physical and moral courage drew high praise from
Goyet and other liberals during the spring and summer as free speech came under ever
greater threat. He condemned the slave trade in Senegal from which the government
appeared to be profiting, and denounced the censorship of newspapers, but he was vastly
outnumbered in the Chamber. Perhaps realizing the hopelessness of the struggle—though
never once weakening in his efforts or resolve—he took out once again his manuscripts
on religion in September 1821, and was pleased to see how far he had advanced with
them. He was still not yet ready to publish, however. Instead, he prepared the second
volume of his Memoirs on the Hundred Days for Béchet, and began a new work, a
Commentary on Filangieri’s Work (Commentaire sur l’ouvrage de Filangieri,) an essay
Benjamin constant 244