the repetitiveness of his picaresque existence and wanting to wake up to a different self.
Joueur et moqueur, a gambler and a wit, he would remain, and he would always need to
satisfy that side of his character, but in that winter of 1786–7 Constant stood in need of
other things as well. He now knew he had no real home and perhaps not even a country
that he could call his own: Lausanne meant for him more than ever the antagonism or
ostracism of his family; the only real friends he had were six hundred miles away in
Edinburgh, and both the circumstances of his leaving Scotland and the cost of the journey
back made it unlikely that he would ever see them again. Life with his father meant
having to defend his opinions every inch of the way when they were together, and when
they were apart Juste’s toleration of his misbehaviour as long as it did not cost him
money. Unfortunately, as we have seen, it did, and thus Benjamin Constant now found
himself virtually friendless, and with his pessimism about the future growing stronger
and stronger—as well it might. At this critical moment in his existence he met Isabelle de
Charrière.
Whether their friendship, which was soon to develop into a special kind of love, began
suddenly or overtook them gradually is uncertain. They may have met at the house of
Jean-Baptiste Suard, where Constant’s father had once again arranged for his son to be
seen and heard, and for his pungent epigrams and pronouncements to be appreciated by
Suard’s eminent friends, the Abbé Morellet (1727–1819) of the Encyclopédie, the
philosopher Condorcet (1743–94), General Lafayette (1757–1834), the politician Garat
(1749–1833) and others.^51 Juste had then returned to his regiment, much to Benjamin’s
relief, leaving his son free to air the most outrageous views about those around him.
Perhaps to his surprise, he found his behaviour was generally tolerated. Of all the Parisian
salons of the day Madame Suard’s was one of the most good-humoured. It was either
there or at another salon such as that of Madame Saurin, from whom he had borrowed
money, that Benjamin, with his cousin Charles with whom he was now temporarily
reconciled, first met Madame de Charrière.^52 From Charles’s letter to his father of 6
March 1787 we know that by that date he and his cousin were already well acquainted
with her.^53 The friendship between Benjamin and Isabelle de Charrière soon became too
exclusive for Charles not to feel superfluous. A practical man of business, Charles’s own
reasons for being in Paris were purely financial: he was looking for a new commercial
venture. In the feverish financial atmosphere of Paris that winter he may also have been
one of the many from Geneva who were hoping to make a more dramatic improvement in
their fortunes. In any case Charles de Constant was hardly the kind of man to appeal to
Isabelle de Charrière. To understand why, and the reasons for such an immediate and
instinctive sympathy between herself and Benjamin Constant, we must look in some
detail at her background and character, and the state she found her life to be in when she
met Constant in March 1787.
Isabelle Agneta Elisabeth van Tuyll van Serooskerken was born in the moated
medieval castle of Zuylen, at what is now Oud-Zuilen, a village near Utrecht, on 20
October 1740, the daughter of a Dutch baron, Diederik Jacob van Tuyll van Serooskerken
and his wife Helena.^54 She was the eldest of seven children, and from an early age she
displayed, like Constant, considerable intellectual powers. She received private tuition at
the castle, from childhood she spoke and wrote French with the greatest facility and she
was thoroughly familiar with the works of the best French authors. Her impulsive and
rebellious nature made her critical of the humdrum world of the Dutch provincial
Isabelle de charriere 81