Constant as a Reader of Sismondi

Coppet’s group – a ‘cercle’, as defined by Simone Balayé that ‘ses membres n’ont à aucun moment tenté de baptiser’ ² – is an expression of informal sociability, cultural and intellectual interchange represents perhaps the only appropriate key to define it: ‘un point de passage ou de cesure’, as has been recently described, ‘entre l’Europe du Midi et l’Europe du Nord, entre latinité et germanité, mais aussi entre les régimes des princes et les structures républicaines (patriciennes ou populaires)’. ³ Coppet’s circle was not merely an academic or intellectual parlour, but for contemporary observers as well as for posterity it was an extraordinary vehicle for new ideas at an aesthetic, political and philosophical level. However, due to its informality, the group left only a few traces of the intense dialogue that took place among its protagonists.