THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLEin this revolution which had taken them by surprise, he gravitated
to the offices o f La Riforme, which had become the temporary
unofficial centre o f government so far as the left-wing republicans
were concerned. He was appalled and also a little amused by the
confusion with which the revolutionary leaders tried to decide
how they would dispose of this almost unwelcome gift o f fate.
It was in this muddled situation that Proudhon was called to
perform his most important act o f the day o f Revolution. ‘After
the President, Flocon, had fortified us with a quotation from
Robespierre, like a captain making a distribution of rum to his
soldiers, I was charged to compose at a printing house these
great words: Citizens, Louis-Philippe will murder you like Charles X;
send him to join Charles X! This, I believe, was the first republican
manifesto. “ Citizen,” said Pdre Flocon to me in the printing shop
where I was at work, “ you occupy a revolutionary post; we count
on your patriotism.” “ You can be sure,” I told him, laughing,
“ that I shall not quit my task until it is finished.” ’
Afterwards, as he wandered again through the streets, Proudhon
was moved to action by the spirit o f the day. He helped to uproot
trees and force railings, he carried paving-stones for the assiduous
architects o f the barricades. Out in the enthusiastic streets it was
impossible for a revolutionary of such conviction not to respond
to the sense of liberation that was abroad.
But when he returned to his room and began to write to his
friends, his enthusiasm tended to wane, and what he thought on
the day after the Revolution was what other less perceptive men
were not to realise until months afterwards. ‘They have made a
revolution without ideas’— that was the truth which dawned on
him on the very evening o f victory, and his life for the next year
was devoted to supplying the lack.
The first person to whom he communicated his thoughts was
Maurice; on the 25 th February he told him that ‘a revolution is a
thing which fatigues one’s spirit prodigiously by its confusion
and emptiness when one witnesses it.’ He found intrigue every
where, chattering triumphant. ‘It is necessary to give a direction
to the movement and already I see it lost beneath the waves of dis
cussion.’ The workers, indeed, were worth more than their leaders,
he thought; they were ‘gay, brave, jesting and honest,’ but, for all
their audacity, they had triumphed only because the monarchy in
its weakness had opposed no serious resistance to the Revolution.
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