THE PRISONER
o f an exile is expensive, his resources are precarious; my new
situation changes all that. I alone lose by the misfortune which has
overtaken me; I believe that my creditors will gain from it. I do
not believe I shall spend in Sainte-Pelagie more than i-§ to 2 francs
a day.’
The relative equanimity with which Proudhon accepted his
situation is more comprehensible when one remembers that, for
the political detainees o f a hundred years ago, the disadvantages
o f imprisonment were generally, except in Russia, far less than
in our own day; a few months after his arrival, he described his
life in this manner: ‘I occupy a square room five metres each way... I was not so well lodged in the Rue Mazarin, even when I
was a Representative. I eat the prison bread, which is good; I take
soup in the morning, twice thick and five times thin each week...
The rest I supply myself from the restaurant. The administration
provides wine at 12 sous a litre, which is better than that o f the
wine merchants at 1 fr. 50 c. a bottle. I entertain visitors in my
room. I have obtained permission to receive pamphlets and news
papers; I have all my books; everything I possess is, like me,
behind bars.’ Not only was he allowed to work on his books, but
he could even continue to edit Le Peuple, so long as it observed
the limitations of the Press laws.
In one way, indeed, his imprisonment was even positively for
tunate, for eight days after his arrest Paris was again engulfed in
civil strife, in the responsibility for which, as a fugitive radical, he
would almost certainly have been implicated, even if he had re
mained inactive. On the 13 th June, the leaders o f the Mountain
raised the red flag over a few barricades around the Conservatoire
des Arts et Metiers and called upon the Parisians to join them.
They were almost a year too late. The vigour o f the working
class had been sapped in June, 1848, and most o f its militants were
dead, imprisoned, transported or in exile. The rest had become
discouraged by defeat and poverty, and a mere handful came into
the streets to support Ledru-Rollin. The revolt was crushed with
out difficulty, and once again the authorities made it an excuse
for reprisals. Heavy sentences were imposed, newspapers were
suspended, soldiers who showed socialist sympathies were pun
ished, and it became a crime to shout the slogan of the Mountain
— ‘Long live the democratic and socialist republic!’
Proudhon did not support the rising of the 13 th June; he had
H i