- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 10.
- Ibid., p. 11.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Constant, Correspondance I (1774–1792), letter 15 dating from November 1785.
The three letters in question are letters 15–17.
- Ibid., letter 16.
- Adolphe, ed. Paul Delbouille, p. 205.
- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 13.
- Harold Nicolson, Benjamin Constant, London: Constable, 1949, p. 32.
- Charrière, Œuvres, III, p. 56.
- Ma Vie, ed. C.P.Courtney, p. 12.
- Quoted in Dennis Wood, ‘Constant in Britain 1780–1787: a provisional chronology’,
ABC, no. 7 (1987), p. 10. See also Frédéric Barbey, Libertés vaudoises d’après le
journal inédit de Philippe Secretan (1756–1826), Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1953, pp.
43–4.
- Constant, Correspondance I (1774–1792), letter 16.
- See, for example, Constant’s journal entry for 8 April 1804: ‘[I must spend the]
winter in Germany. It is only there that I shall be encouraged to finish the book
which is the sole interest, the only consolation in my life’ (Œuvres, p. 289).
- See Benjamin Constant, De la religion considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses
développements. Livre premier suivi d’extraits des autres livres, Postface et notes de
Pierre Deguise, Lausanne: Bibliothèque romande, 1971, p. 269. Constant claimed to
‘appartenir à la confession chrétienne’.
- See C.P.Courtney, A Bibliography of Editions of the Writings of Benjamin Constant
to 1833, London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1981, pp. 3–6.
- Rudler, Jeunesse, p. 183.
- Charrière, Œuvres, III, p. 74.
- On the political situation in Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud at this period, see
Charles Burnier, La Vie vaudoise et la Révolution. De la servitude à la liberté,
Lausanne: Bridel, 1902.
- See William [et Clara de Charrière] de Sévery, La Vie de société dans le Pays de
Vaud à la fin du dix-huitième siècle. Salomon et Catherine de Charrière de Sévery et
leurs amis, Lausanne: Georges Bridel; Paris: Fischbacher, 1911–12, 2 vols, vol. I, p.
- The exact date of the ‘harangue’ is unclear. On Constant’s connections with
Lausanne, see Benjamin Constant 1767–1830 et Lausanne (exhibition catalogue),
Lausanne: Association Benjamin Constant, 1980 and, on his complex relationship
with Switzerland, Roger Francillon, ‘Benjamin Constant ou la Suisse refoulée’,
ABC, no. 13 (1992), pp. 115–28. In a Notice on Constant’s life dated April 1831,
Jean-Jacques Coulmann gives a unique and valuable insight into Constant’s early
hatred of injustice, quoting an anecdote from a now lost manuscript by Constant:
I was quick-tempered by nature, opposed to all injustice, and with my
boyhood friends I automatically took the side of the weakestagainst
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