between April and June 1829 Constant published twenty-four articles in the Courrier
français. In the period 1829–30 he is also known to have contributed unsigned articles to
Le Temps, though it is more difficult to identify these with certainty.^53 In addition he now
brought together a miscellaneous collection of articles he had written over many years
under the title Mélanges de littérature et de politique, and these appeared in June 1829.
They included, among mostly political essays, his Lettre sur Julie—an article on Julie
Talma, his study of Madame de Staël and her work based on earlier essays including the
1817 obituary, and his thoughts on German theatre which had appeared in a slightly
different form alongside Wallstein.^54 He was to develop his ideas on the theatre further in
two articles which appeared in October 1829 in the Revue de Paris entitled ‘Réflexions
sur la tragédie’ (‘Reflections on tragedy’).^55 According to Kurt Kloocke Constant had
met the German Jewish playwright Ludwig Robert (1778–1832) (brother of the
celebrated Berlin literary hostess Rahel Varnhagen von Ense (1771–1833)) in Paris in
May 1826, and may have seen him again at Baden-Baden between August and October
1829 where Constant’s poor health took him once more:^56 the ‘Réflexions’ on tragedy
were inspired by Robert’s play, Die Macht der Verhältnisse (The Force of Circumstance)
(1819), about a man who defends the social prejudices and institutions by which he is
oppressed. Such a paradoxical situation, of course, had also been close to the heart of
Adolphe.
Constant may have written his important ‘Réflexions’ while at Baden-Baden. It was
from there that he wrote to Rosalie on 7 October 1829:
I was sent back from Paris to take the waters. I have been here for
two months, having been quite ill when I arrived. I’m slowly
recovering, without the cause of my illness having been in any way
cured by the remedies I have been given. Old age is making itself
felt in every part of me: it’s attacking my eyes, my stomach, my
kidneys, my bowels, my feet. I observe it as it happens, just as I
might watch a heartless cat tormenting a mouse. I’d rather not be
the mouse, but what can I do about it?^57In October 1829 Constant made a brief visit to Coulmann’s house at
Brumath and attended a banquet given in his honour in Strasbourg, before
returning to continue his treatment at Baden-Baden. His welcome was as
enthusiastic as ever in Alsace, but he now found the number of requests
coming from his constituents a drain on his time and on his low reserves
of energy. And he had another difficult parliamentary session to face in
January 1830, for which the opposition had been bracing itself for some
months.
While Constant had been in Germany in August 1829, Charles X had replaced
Martignac’s ministry with a new one under his favourite, Prince Jules de Polignac, which
was guaranteed to be yet more fanatical than its predecessor. A final confrontation
between a stubborn Bourbon king unable to learn or to adapt to nineteenth-century
realities and his opponents was becoming unavoidable. Political societies were being
Benjamin constant 258