lonely exile. This Margravine was either Friederike Caroline of Saxe-Coburg, the sickly
wife of the Margrave who had for long years neglected her in favour of his various
mistresses, or the Dowager Margravine, Sophie Caroline Marie of Brunswick-
Wolfenbüttel (1737–1817), sister of the Duke of Brunswick and widow of the previous
Margrave. Gustave Rudler opts for the second of these on the grounds that the
notoriously unhappy Friederike Caroline would have been unlikely to cheer anyone up.^83
From the letter quoted above, which Rudler appears not to have seen when he wrote La
Jeunesse de Benjamin Constant, it might look as if it were indeed she who befriended
Constant, but since Constant refers to ‘la vieille margrave’ in Ma Vie we must conclude
with Rudler that Constant is most likely to have been the protégé of Sophie Caroline of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. At Court Constant made his first and fateful acquaintaince with
the pleasures of the gaming table. He also fought at least two duels,^84 either with other
young men at Margrave Alexander’s Court or with fellow-students at the University. This
was not exactly what his father had had in mind when he sent him to Erlangen, as a letter
from Juste to his friend Sir Robert Murray Keith dated 18 April 1783 reveals:
[Benjamin] is in Erlangen at the moment where I took him so that
he can acquire that gravitas and bombast which characterizes
Messieurs the German professors, highly respectable gentlemen
every one, but whose ability to hit hard is the single best corrective
to an excess of liveliness in a student.^85Ma Vie tells a very different story from what Juste would have wished. On
the one hand Benjamin undoubtedly studied seriously for long periods
while at Erlangen. But on the other he felt free at last to indulge in ‘mille
extravagances’, many acts of folly, and to draw attention to himself he
took, ostensibly as a mistress, a girl of doubtful reputation. He did not like
her, nor did the girl allow their relationship to become a physical one, yet
he kept up the elaborate and expensive pretence of keeping her as his
mistress—and this in spite of the Margravine’s disapproval. In fact the
more the Margravine, his erstwhile friend, revealed her hostility to the girl,
whose mother had in the past offended her, the more attached to his
‘mistress’ Constant became. He went further and, encouraged by the
Margravine’s old enemy, the girl’s mother, indulged to the full his talent
for savage mockery at the expense of his protector. The Margravine was
justifiably outraged by Constant’s behaviour and saw to it that his father
was informed. Juste immediately ordered his son to leave Erlangen and to
join him in Brussels. Soon afterwards Juste took Benjamin with him to
Edinburgh so that he could begin his studies once more, in a different and,
he hoped, more suitable environment. It was to prove a fateful and—for
once—farsightedly wise decision on Juste’s part.
Benjamin constant 40