THE MAN OF AFFAIRSthe border, but he was tolerant o f Proudhon’s radical reputation;
perhaps the common desire to undermine the existing regime
drew them together with a bond that withstood merely partisan
differences. It seems certain at least that, while Proudhon felt the
traditional detestation o f his future mother-in-law because o f the
bullying way in which he thought she behaved towards Euphrasie,
he always maintained a cordial, if impatient, attitude towards
M. Pidgard, who had more than a little o f his own impetuous
Quixoticism.
Proudhon kept his betrothal a close secret. Only his mother was
told; and none of those intimate friends with whom he had been
in the habit of discussing his most private affairs was given the
least hint of this departure from the old rhythm of his life. Why
he should have acted thus can only be a matter for speculation,
but one might justifiably conjecture that he may have felt his
relationship was only tentative and might end in humiliating
failure.
As a lover, Proudhon was formal and rather patronising. From
the start he seems to have been anxious to establish the patriarchal
position which his theories on marriage demanded. In his letters
to Euphrasie there are none o f those literary expressions of tender
ness or passion, which he regarded as degenerate and which he
associated with the detested Romantics. ‘Profound respect,’ ‘sin
cere and entire devotion,’ were as far as he would allow himself to
go, and for two years he addressed Euphrasie merely as ‘Made
moiselle.’ A t the same time, he showed a close interest in her well
being. He enquired perpetually o f her health, and prescribed a
treatment for migraine based on the methods of the socialist
Raspail. He sided with her against her mother, and accepted
without recrimination her intellectual shortcomings. Some years
later he told Bergmann that he was governed in his attitude to
wards her, not by passion (‘you understand without difficulty of
what nature my passions are’) but by ‘sympathy for her position,
by esteem for her person.’ Yet if he was never led into transports
of love, there are enough indications to suggest that he was a
more hopeful and a happier man for having met Euphrasie. A
passage in his diary for July, 1847, indicates this in an oblique way.
‘A man marries a woman ten or twelve years younger than himself,
in order that his youth may be prolonged all life long... Up to 15
or 16 years, he has his father, mother and teacher, from 16 to 30