Word: constantly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Both Charlotta von Hardenberg and Madame de Staël had handsome figures, but the only other thing they had in common was Benjamin Constant. Charlotta was sweet and submissive, Madame de Stael brilliant but tyrannical. Constant couldn't make up his mind. Shuttling back and forth between them, the famed French intellectual debated for 15 years over which one he should take and which he should leave. Cécile is his demonstration of how variable a Constant...
...cile (probable date: 1811) is not the novel scholars were led to believe it might be. It is an autobiographical narrative in which only the names of the characters have been changed. Charlotta von Hardenberg is Cécile, Madame de Stael is Madame de Malbee, and Constant is the narrator...
...cile begins as the story of a man (Narrator Constant) whose own wife has taken a lover, and who decides to fall in love himself, if he can. He meets Cécile at her home in Brunswick, and the same night, though not in love with her, writes a brilliant note saying he is. Cécile scorns him, and Constant is enraptured; he concludes that he feels "the most violent passion...
Naturally, Cécile eventually agrees to see him, and they decide that they are in love. But it is a talky affair, and Constant is cautious. Opportunities abound, but the hero fears "to chain myself" by bouncing to bed with the lady...
After 13 long years of this, Constant decides he has been a dolt and resolves to "risk all to win all." After 13 years, Cécile scarcely expects a change in tactics, and Constant knows it. Words lead to caresses, and the unsuspecting Cécile submits "as much from surprise as from rapture...