THE PRISONER
gave birth to a second daughter, who was named Marcelle.
Proudhon’s first reaction was characteristically cautious, and he
expressed himself not so well satisfied as he had been with
Catherine. ‘Kathe has a great, chesty voice, while her little sister
has a fluting voice and, if I am not mistaken, her mother’s nose.
The first is a real Franc-Comtois, the second will be a Parisian.’
But a few days later, when Marcelle was barely a week old, the
paternal feelings which had been expressed with restraint to his
friends became overwhelmingly strong, and in his diary he
abandoned himself to an uninhibited expression o f delight at
the miracle o f parenthood. ‘I surprise myself each day, each
hour, by being as preoccupied with my children as a young man
with his mistress.... That love o f family makes my life normal,
clear, easy, free, raised above all apprehensions and above death
itself.... There was a real understanding o f the family in those
who made it the basis o f the fatherland and extolled brotherhood.
Brothers, yes, and fathers, mothers, sons, uncles, aunts, nephews
and nieces and cousins, and all those who are connected by all
the spiritual, temporal or carnal links that the heart can conceive—
that is the Republic!’
His serenity at this time went beyond his happy family life,
and his emergence from the emotional storm precipitated by the
coup d’etat seemed to provide a new stability. This was shown
when his friends, anxious for his future, pressed him to leave
France after his release, in case his freedom should again be
jeopardised. Arthur Brisbane offered him journalistic work in
New York; he declined the invitation. Charles Edmond urged
him to go to Sardinia; ‘Who the devil, in Europe, looks for light
to Cagliari ?’ Proudhon retorted.
He felt that all this talk about expatriation showed a dis
proportionate dread of the future. ‘I do not believe in the fall of
the heavens because a monomaniac, served by all the old guard
o f politics, holds us at this moment under his heel.’ Besides, he
thought there were subjects on which he could write despite the
despotism. ‘Economics, history, philosophy— these things are far
enough above everyday politics for them to pass easily.’ And even
if he could no longer write, he was still resolved to remain and
take whatever living he could find. ‘Spinoza was a good lens-
grinder in Amsterdam, and St. Paul made tents. Why should I not
become a clerk somewhere again, or a lock-keeper ?’
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