THE SEE-SAW POLICY OF THE DIRECTORY

Although, upon arriving in Paris, Constant put aside his book on polytheism, religion would never be far from his mind during the Directory years. Religion was one of the government's most pressing problems and one of the period's most contentious issues. Within governing circles and intellectual elites, heated debates took place on the nature and political value of Catholicism, with key theorists and politicians arguing over its compatibility or incompatibility with a republican regime. In the end, the Directory's failed religious policies were a principal cause of its ignominious decline and fall. Constant's experiences during these years taught him much that would inform his liberal philosophy and his writings on religion.

When Constant and Madame de Staël arrived in Paris, they could not have failed to notice the changing political mood. With the removal of Robespierre, the political pendulum had swung to the right. After six years of revolutionary upheaval, culminating in the trauma of the Terror, the propertied and educated classes of Paris longed for peace and a return to order. Only a few days before the couple's arrival, the last sans-culottes uprising of the Revolution had been put down. Large crowds of hungry men and women from the working-class districts had invaded the Convention's meeting hall demanding “bread and the Constitution of 93.” This time, however, they had elicited little sympathy from the government, which countered with a swift and harsh repression.