send Benjamin away from home. On 6 February 1782 Benjamin Constant matriculated at
the University of Erlangen.^80 The choice of this German university was the result of
Juste’s chance meeting with the Protestant Margrave of Ansbach-Bayreuth, Christian
Friedrich Carl Alexander (1736–1806), an amiable and cultured eccentric whose court
was essentially French in outlook. It was a happier choice than all the others had been.
Benjamin, now nearly 14 years old and emancipated from the close supervision of Juste
or his tutors, divided his time between his studies at the University—of which Margrave
Alexander was Rector Magnificentissimus and a great benefactor—and attendance at
Court.
Little is known of the precise nature of his reading or other activities within the
University. From his earlier and later studies we can assume the Greek and history
dominated his interests, and that his knowledge of German and of German literature
originated during the year and a half he spent at Erlangen. It was a fine university,
cosmopolitan and open to new ideas, with many distinguished scholars among its
teachers.^81 The following year, probably in April 1783, Constant wrote to his cousin,
Wilhelm de Sévery, who was his own age and a student at the Military Academy of
Colmar, describing his life at Erlangen:
The detail of my occupations can be briefly summarized. I work for
about eight hours a day. I go horse-riding every afternoon, and
every evening I go to pay my respects to the Margravine.
Sometimes I play cards and I have supper there. She is kinder to me
than I deserve, she treats me with great cordiality. She allows me to
visit her Court every evening, a distinction she has granted only to
me, and she has obtained for me a post as Gentleman of the
Bedchamber to the Margrave. I cannot express all my gratitude to
her. All that I lack here is a friend, but I shall not, I think, find one
to my liking here.^82In fact apart from attending lectures, which were mostly given in Latin, it
would seem, and of which a great variety were available in his fields of
interest—Latin and Greek language and literature, ancient and modern
history, theology—as well as possibly attending private tutorial sessions,
Constant appears to have been a rather solitary student, devoting all his
energies to studying on his own. In the middle of his stay news reached
him of the death of his grandmother, ‘la Générale’ Rose-Susanne de
Constant, which occurred on 14 October 1782. Although his reaction is
not recorded, it can only have been one of profound grief: one of his
earliest objects of love and attachment had been taken away from him, and
the loss may have had a deleterious effect on Constant’s subsequent
behaviour in Erlangen.
For company he had members of the Court, and he appears to have been temporarily
adopted by ‘Madame la Margrave’, the Margravine who no doubt felt sorry for him in his
The grief that does not speak 39