Proudhon - A Biography

THE MAN OF AFFAIRS
Proudhon, and her parents kept a lace-trimming establishment.
She was the youngest member of a family of six, and, as she told
her relentless questioner, she could earn from ten to twelve francs
a day by her trade, provided she found the work. Finally, she gave
Proudhon her father’s card, and this strange first meeting was
ended.
The prospective suitor was not a man to delay, and on the
following day he wrote to Euphrasie a long letter, setting down
with the greatest sangfroid his reasons for wishing to marry her.
It is a letter of proposal which, for sheer oddity, bears comparison
with those curious epistles that had been written by the English
romantics a generation before to the ladies of their reasoned
choice, such as Peacock’s letter to Jane Gryffydd or the pleas of
Godwin to Harriet Lee. ‘Mademoiselle,’ Proudhon began, ‘I must
appear to you a singular eccentric, and you must have found my
conduct yesterday most strange. To accost in the street a young
person of whose position, family and name I am ignorant, and im­
mediately to make propositions of marriage! Indeed, if that is not
crazy, it is perhaps at least suspect. It is therefore as much an ex­
planation that I have to give you, Mademoiselle, as a declaration
of my feelings.
‘But first o f all, if you can in all conscience swear that your
character, your heart and your reason are equal to your face, is it
not true that you will begin to believe that my action is not, after
all, as thoughtless as it seems?...
T had, in principle, resolved to settle down. Reasoning on this
question, I told myself that if I took a wife I would wish her to be
young and even pretty. These qualities, believe me, neither exclude
nor take the place o f others in my mind, but I felt that I needed
a spouse for my eyes as well as for my heart and mind...
‘As for fortune, through philosophy or, if you like it better,
through necessity I set little store by it. I know that most dowries
are worth, and what obligations they impose on the husband, but
I am determined to change nothing in my modest habits. From
that, Mademoiselle, you will conclude that the woman who
marries me must, like myself, resign herself to modesty; with that
quality she will seem to me rich enough.
‘After the considerations of age, fortune, face, morals, come
those of education. On this point you will permit me to say,
Mademoiselle, that I have always felt an antipathy for the high-