Slatkine Reprints, 1973), vol. I, pp. 339–40, where it is suggested that Constant and
Madame de Charrière saw each other at Madame Saurin’s.
- On 6 March 1787 Charles de Constant wrote to his father Samuel:
Lisette tells me that you would like to be informed about who I know
here. This is how I spend my week: Monday is Madame Suard’s
salon, Tuesday Madame de Molé, Wednesday Madame Prévot,
Thursday Madame Gaillard, Friday Madame Pauw, Saturday
Madame Piscatory. I can’t in fact accept all the invitations and
respond to all the kindness I’ve been shown. I’ve met Madame
Charrière de Zuilen, that has kept me occupied too [jai fait
connaissances avec Me. Charrière de Zuilen voila encore de
l’occupation].
(Geneva, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, Manuscrits
Constant 17, lettres de Charles de Constant à Samuel de
Constant 1776–1800, f. 89)
Constant will have been with Charles at least some of the time at these various
gatherings, at one of which he had in all probability recently met Madame de
Charrière. The two cousins were not always at daggers drawn in Paris. Charles, who
was hoping to get involved in another trading venture such as had taken him to
Canton, told his father Samuel in his letter of 4 January 1787:
I’m prepared to go to the other end of the world rather than lead the
life of an idler here. I couldn’t bear it at my age. Benjamin who is in
pretty much the same situation as me is very miserable at the idea
too. We make fine statements about our position but they don’t get us
anywhere.
(Manuscrits Constant 17, f. 73)
Although Charles’s writings on trade with China have been published (Louis
Dermigny, Les Mémoires de Charles de Constant sur le commerce à la Chine, Paris:
S.E.V.P.E.N., 1964), his letters and journal are largely unpublished and constitute a
quite invaluable source of information, albeit often strongly biased, on this, a time of
intense political activity in Paris with the Assemblée des notables, as well as on later
periods of his cousin’s life. He clearly had literary talent like his father Samuel, and
this no doubt exacerbated his jealousy of Benjamin, and made his bewildered
resentment at Benjamin’s later success more keenly felt. In his letters to his sister
Rosalie, Charles shows a marked tendency to moralize, and there would of course be
no shortage of material to work on, especially during Constant’s relationship with
Germaine de Staël. Simone Balayé’s article ‘Benjamin Constant et son cousin
Charles de Constant à Paris en 1796’ (Benjamin Constant et la Révolution française,
ed. Dominique Verrey et Anne-Lise Delacrétaz, Geneva: Droz [Université de
Lausanne, Publications de la Faculté des Lettres, XXXII], 1989, pp. 97–118) draws
on Charles’s writings to throw light on the year of such events as Constant’s
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