The month of December 1830 teemed with events. One of the gravest was the death of Benjamin Constant. On the 10th we received orders to be ready equipped and armed by the 12th, to attend the funeral procession of the famous deputy. He had died at seven in the evening of 8 December. His death created a great sensation throughout Paris. Benjamin Constant's popularity was a strange one, and it would be hard to say upon what it was founded. He was a Swiss Protestant, and had been brought up in England and Germany. He could speak English, German and French with equal ease; but he composed and wrote in French. He was young, good-looking, strong in body, but weak in character. From the time he set foot in France, Constant did nothing unless under the influence of women: they were his rulers in literature and his guides in politics. He was taken up by three of the most celebrated women of his time; by Madame Tallien, Madame de Beauharnais and Madame de Staël, and he was completely under their influence; the latter, especially, had an immense influence over his life. _Adolphe_ was he himself, and the heroine in it was Madame de Staël. Besides, the life of Benjamin was not by any means the life of a man, but that of a woman, that is to say, a mixture of inconsistencies and weaknesses. Raised to the Tribunal after the overturning of the Directory, he opposed Bonaparte when he was First Consul, not, as historians state, because he had no belief in the durability of Napoléon's good fortune, but because Madame de Staël, with whom he was then on most intimate terms, detested the First Consul. He was expelled from the Tribunal in 1801, and exiled from France in 1802, and went to live near his mistress (or rather master) at Coppet. About the year 1806 or 1807 this life of slavery grew insufferable to him, and, weak though he was, he broke his chains. Read his novel _Adolphe_, and you will see how heavily the chain galled him! He settled at Hanover, where he married a German lady of high birth, a relative of the Prince of Hardenberg, and behold him an aristocrat, moving in the very highest aristocratic circles in Germany, never leaving the princes of the north, but living in the heart of the coalition which threatened France, directing foreign proclamations, writing his brochure, _De l'esprit de conquête et d'usurpation_, upon the table of the Emperor Alexander; and, finally, re-entering France with Auguste de Staël, in the carriage of King Charles-John. How can one escape being a Royalist in such company!