ABSTRACT
And there our knowledge of the two texts at this period ends. On 2 January 1807 Constant began work again in earnest on his projected study of religion.6 Charlotte’s husband was unreconciled to the idea of losing her and indignant at her continuing sporadic affair with Constant: there was the possibility of a duel, but the storm eventually blew over. Constant’s resolve wavered from time to time as he recognized Charlotte’s limitations: ‘Walk with Charlotte: in her character sensitivity, extreme uprightness, kindness, love, touchiness and a little monotony’ (10 January 1807).7 In fact marriage to Charlotte in Napoleon’s newly Catholic France might not be without its complications. Quite apart from the social stigma of Charlotte’s double divorce, which made it likely that she would be snubbed in some Parisian circles, a considerable legal problem existed. Constant was a Protestant divorcee from a wholly Protestant marriage to Minna; Charlotte’s first husband by a German Protestant marriage, Baron von Marenholtz (whom she had divorced on 15 August 1794), was still alive, and therefore the practising Catholic Alexandre Du Tertre ought never to have married her in Brunswick in June 1798-in the eyes of the Catholic church that second marriage was invalid. But the problem could be simplified: Du Tertre could ask to have his marriage to Charlotte declared null and void by the Catholic Archbishop of Paris, and then the two Protestant divorcees could simply enter into a new marriage using any Reformed church that tolerated divorce and remarriage.
