Even in these negative terms, Raspail’s candidacy enraged the
Mountain, who accused Proudhon of playing into the hands of
Bonaparte by attempting to split the left Republican vote. Feeling
grew so strong that he was forced to fight a duel with Felix Pyat,
in which neither of the inexperienced rivals was hurt; shortly
afterwards he was challenged by Charles Delescluze, but this time
refused to fight on the grounds that he had already proved his
courage by fighting Pyat and could now afford to defy the un
civilised prejudice in favour o f duelling.
This dispute between Proudhon and his fellows of the left was
given an academic flavour by the results of the elections, for Louis
Bonaparte was returned on the 20th December with a vote more
than double the combined totals of the other candidates. The fears
o f the peasants and the urban bourgeoisie, the ambitions of the
priests, the generals and the industrialists, gave France a leader
who was the crystallisation of all these terrors and interests, a vul
garian, a voluptuary, a hypocrite, an authoritarian and, for all his
dynastic ambitions and connections, at heart a bourgeois of the
first order, a Tartuffe who outdid Tartuffe. Whether the readers
o f Le Peuple had voted for Cavaignac or Ledru-Rollin or Raspail
was unimportant, except as a demonstration. Only 36,000 out of
7,000,000 voters showed their rejection of the Presidency by
calling for Raspail! It was indeed a scanty nucleus, and Proudhon,
who on the day o f the elections remarked, ‘The people have
spoken like a drunken man,’ consoled himself with the thought
that the very discontent which had sent Napoleon into power
might force him to take a revolutionary path. On the 15 th Decem
ber he wrote in Le Peuple: ‘Louis Bonaparte is condemned by
universal suffrage to complete the Revolution of 1848. Socialist or
traitor— there is no middle way for him.’ Three days later he
remarked to Antoine Gauthier, ‘Soon the five million voices
given to Bonaparte will cry: “Down with capital!” ’ And he added
impulsively, summarising his life’s creed in one spontaneous sen
tence: ‘Morbleu, let us revolutionise! It is the only good thing,
the only reality in life.’
9
Though the last months o f 1848 were filled with excitements
and alarms, and the period following the elections was marked byTHE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE