a gift of 200,000 francs to pay off his gambling debts to the banker Lafitte ‘in the name
of Liberty’. Constant accepted the money but reserved his right to be independent,
warning him that he would be the first to oppose the government if it made mistakes.
Louis-Philippe generously allowed him to keep the money and do as he wished.^58
Constant was not in fact offered a position in the government. His reputation with
conservative French Catholics was not high: he was after all a Swiss Protestant divorcee
with a German divorcee wife and a dubious revolutionary past, an incurable gambler who
had failed for years to repay his debts, and had been highly unconventional in matters of
sexual morality. And so he remained where it suited him best, as an outsider and
occasional sniper in the Chamber and an adviser on drawing up new legislation. He was
re-elected deputy for Strasbourg in October 1830 and continued defending individual
freedom of thought and belief against all assailants. But it was not to be for long. The
excitement of the July Revolution and what had followed had brought him back to life
but it had also exhausted him. In November two disappointments possibly brought the
end much nearer: a rather poorly thought-out proposal of his on the regulation of printing
and bookselling was overwhelmingly rejected by the Chamber of Deputies.^59 And on 18
November he felt crushed when he failed yet again in his candidature to the French
Academy, even though this time he had been supported by Chateaubriand. He must have
realized that this was his last chance to wear the habit vert of the Immortels, but thanks to
the intriguing of a fellow liberal, Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard, who detested the
unconventional and individualistic side of Constant, he lost to Viennet, a writer who is
now forgotten.
On 27 September 1830 Constant had written what was to be his last letter to Rosalie.
After expressing hopes about the new King’s liberal sentiments, he had said:
What is sad for me is my state of health. I have been moving about
rather too much since 25 July and I am suffering for it. My legs are
swollen, all I can face is a little soup. Finally I’ve been forced to
take refuge in the Tivoli Baths to take douches and try to gain a
short reprieve from nature. I don’t know if I’ll be granted one.
Among the causes of my illness is the army of people seeking
favours who descended on me after our victory. Working people
and young people are admirable. But the hordes of people with
requests are brazen and greedy. They arrive with claims and pitiless
determination. For five hours I was tormented right up to midnight,
then awoken again at 5 in the morning by people asking for posts I
was in no position to give.^60He added as a postscript that creeping paralysis now affected his feet, his
tongue and sometimes other parts of his body. He wrote to his friend
Prosper de Barante on 18 October 1830:
My health is so bad that I have been unable to sustain an hour’s
conversation. I’m better now, and perhaps I’ll be granted anBenjamin constant 260