Proudhon - A Biography

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
Here, among a mixed clientele which included commercial tra­
vellers, artists, and the editors o f La Re forme, Proudhon frequently
ate the excellent dinner provided for i fr. 60 c. and afterwards
took coffee and chatted with his friends in the little garden behind
the establishment. Darimon, having already formed an admiration
for ‘the hardy reformer,’ was delighted to meet his intellectual
hero, but also somewhat surprised to find him such an ‘original’
in appearance. His head was submerged in a great hat with
a broad brim, his bony body was enveloped in an enormous
olive-green frock-coat that reached almost to his heels, he wore
heavy, laced shoes, and his trousers, which were too short, re­
vealed coarse grey stockings. In a Paris where even the journalists
of the Left aspired to a certain sartorial elegance, Proudhon re­
mained the uncompromising provincial, careless of appearance
and, in the privacy of his room, lapsing into the blouse and sabots
of his peasant childhood. In addition to the roughness of his dress,
Darimon found that Proudhon had carried into the days of his
Parisian celebrity the brusque manner, curt speech and contempt
for compliments that were typical of the Jura mountaineers.
It was this arresting figure who, on the 6th February, 1847,
decided to put his resolution regarding marriage into effect in a
manner as strange as his appearance. On that morning, in the
environs of the Rue Mazarin, he accosted a young woman whom
he had previously observed, but to whom he had never spoken
before and whose very name was unknown to him. A ll he did
know was that her bearing marked her as a self-reliant member of
that class of working women to which his mother had belonged
and from which he had decided that he must seek a wife who
would be an adequate partner. In addition, she was pleasant-
Iooking; the critical Darimon, who first saw her two years later,
went so far as to call her ‘a beautiful person with blonde tresses,
resplendent with strength and health.’
Proudhon, having quickly satisfied himself that his impressions
were not demonstrably incorrect, led the conversation into an
abrupt proposal of marriage. There is, unfortunately, no record of
the emotions which the young woman felt on being approached
in this unorthodox manner, but she appears to have preserved
an equanimity in keeping with Proudhon’s own forthrightness,
for she answered his questions with the greatest frankness. Her
name was Euphrasie Piegard, she was fourteen years younger than