THE PRISONER
Faces were sad, and all minds were overwhelmed. The fact is
that, while not counting in any way on the good faith or prudence
of the President, nobody expected that he would risk such a
crime.’
In the evening he called on Victor Hugo, who, with a tiny
group o f members of the Mountain, was planning a tardy
resistance to Bonaparte’s coup. He saw their plan with a pessi
mistically realistic eye. ‘I have come to warn you as a friend,’
he said to Hugo. ‘You are creating illusions for yourselves. The
people will be taken in, and they will not stir. Bonaparte will win
them over.... The Republic made the people; he wished to turn
them back into the populace. He will succeed, and you will fail. In
his favour he has strength, guns, the errors of the people and the
stupidity o f the Assembly. The few men of the left to whom you
belong will not prevail against the coup d’itat. You are honest,
and he has the advantage of being a rascal. Believe me, you must
cease to resist. There is no way out of the situation. We must
wait, but at this moment a struggle would be mad.’
Hugo rejected this advice, and later remembered it with bitter
ness, as if it had been a betrayal. Yet Proudhon was right, and
those who violently resisted the coup d’itat merely made a
romantic gesture which had no chance o f success and no popular
support.
But, while Proudhon perceived and took into account the
indifference of.the people, he neither shared nor approved o f it.
On the contrary, the events o f the time had just as intense an
effect on him as the February Revolution, with the difference
that, while in 1848 his feelings were mixed, in 1851-2 he was
appalled throughout the period while the coup d’itat was being
consolidated. This is shown clearly in the following passages
from his diary.
3 rd December. ‘Never has such an assault been committed on the
good faith o f a nation.... The insult is too sharp, the nation is
lost if it gives in!’
4 th December. ‘I rise at 5.30 in the morning: I have had a feverish
and inflammatory sleep, with intolerable beating of the arteries.
... If I were free, I would bury myself under the ruins of the
Republic with her faithful citizens, or else I would go to live far
from a land unworthy of liberty.’
5 th December. ‘How right I was, in 1843, to cry out against that