and not yet moribund, I was impatient at receiving no news from her.
I thought that her father—that guardian angel to whom I owe so
much—was intercepting the ‘sighs which were on their way from one
pole to the other’ [Charlotte’s fanciful description of her
correspondence with Constant], and I wanted to find some way of
making at least one of my love letters impenetrable to his vigilant
eye. I wrote to Charlotte using the name of a bookseller and saying
that I had sold her books. The titles of these books were a list of the
memorable moments in our chaste amours. I reminded her of the day,
the place, the hour, the object, and finally I mentioned Henri—my
nom de guerre at the time—and Charlotte. I dated it from Dove-
house [i.e. Colombier, the town where Madame de Charrière lived]
and signed myself Bécé [i.e. B.C.]. Certainly it was difficult to make
things more plain. In order to have some reason for sending the letter,
I ended by telling her that the books cost 32 louis and that I looked
forward to receiving that amount from her. I knew that when he saw
a bill for 32 louis, her worthy father would give up all claim to the
correspondence and would speedily take the missive to his daughter.
Since my suspicions about interception were completely groundless,
the letter did go straight into the fat white hands of Charlotte. Would
you believe that she didn’t understand a single word of it? That she
thought it really was a bill and that she sent from house to house
asking everyone she knew to explain to her what it was all about,
where was Dove-house and who was this bookseller Bécé, from
whom she insisted she had never bought a thing? And thus my letter
went all round the town without a soul understanding it, even though
the name ‘Dove-house’ was clear enough for anyone who knew I was
at Colombier—and everybody did know I was there—and my faulty
English must have given away the fact that I was a foreigner? Finally
the letter reached a man who knows some English and had guessed
about my relationship with Charlotte. He explained the joke to her
and she burned the fateful letter. You must admit no one was ever
more stupid than that!
57.
Dorette Berthoud, op. cit., p. 22.
- See note 56 above.
- Constant, Œuvres, p. 339, diary entry for 18 July 1804.
- Cécile, ed. Paul Delbouille, p. 177. Interestingly Constant’s father had indeed given
him a piano—Benjamin was a good keyboard player—and in his letter of 24 August
1790 asked him: ‘Are you using the piano? Is it repaired?’ (Constant,
Correspondance I (1774–1792), lettre 97).
- Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. Nachlass Langer, MS BA II,
107, Briefe an Langer von Féronce v. Rotencreutz.
- Charrière, Œuvres, III, p. 593.
- Rudler, Jeunesse, p. 402.
List of abbreviations 290
