rebellious thoughts which form the kernel of her imaginative writings. At Mme. de Staël's house Constant met a whole host of foreign diplomatists, disaffected journalists, and plotting women, who for the moment influenced him against the Convention. He soon, however, arrived at convictions of his own, refuted his first newspaper articles, and, more radical than his friend, joined the "Patriot" party in opposing the so-called Moderates, in whom he perceived no moderation. The year 1795 he spent, on the invitation of Mme. de Staël, at her country-house of Coppet, in Switzerland; the following year she was separated from her husband. When, as First Consul, in 1799, Napoleon gave France a constitution, in which autocracy was veiled by a slight pretence of freedom, he nominated-Constant, formerly his ardent admirer, a member of the Tribunate. In this capacity Constant, supported by some few sympathisers, carried on an honourable struggle against the Napoleonic absolutism, a struggle which attracted the attention of all Europe, and highly exasperated the First Consul. In 1802 the latter made the famous remark about the five or six metaphysicians among the Tribunes who deserved to be drowned, and not long after, these five or six, namely Constant and his friends, were expelled by the votes of a servile majority. Mme. de Staël and her father, the famous Necker, showing themselves actively antagonistic to Napoleon's autocratic policy, were both banished from France. Constant, who followed Mme. de Staël to Coppet, was forbidden to return. In May 1802, Mme. de Staël became a widow. In 1803-4 she and Constant travelled together in Germany. She, loving him devotedly, evidently seems to have expected that he would marry her; but it is plain that he did not reciprocate her feeling; it was only out of weakness and compassion that he concealed from her his constant correspondence with Charlotte von Hardenberg. Having probably invented some pretext for leaving her, he went to Weimar alone. There, in 1804, he translated Schiller's _Wallenstein_ into French. It was not Constant but A. W. Schlegel who accompanied Mme. de Staël to Italy in 1805 (as tutor to her children), on the journey immortalised in _Corinne_. Constant was privately married to his Charlotte in the summer of 1808, and so little was Madame de Staël resigned to his defection, that terrible scenes occurred when she unexpectedly met the newly married pair in the neighbourhood of Geneva. Charlotte, driven to despair by her rival's furious jealousy, made an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide. So great was Madame de Staël's influence over Constant, that she actually persuaded him to leave his wife and return for a time with her to Coppet.