trade of man of letters; instead o f following great works in the
silence of an honest employment, as I should have liked, I must
live from the daily product o f my pen.’
The prejudice against him penetrated into the most personal
aspects of his life. A t the end of 1952 he decided to leave the Rue
de la Fontaine, in whose airless and sunless atmosphere his chil
dren ailed constantly, and in February, 1853, he discovered a
suitable apartment, with a good garden, in the Rue St. Jacques.
But as soon as the landlord heard his prospective tenant’s name,
he withdrew immediately from the negotiations. ‘Would it not
be amusing,’ remarked the exasperated Proudhon, ‘if the property
owners avenged themselves by turning me into the street ?’
By April, however, he succeeded in finding an even better
dwelling a little farther out o f the centre o f Paris, on the edge of
Montparnasse. It was on the ground floor of No. 83, Rue d’Enfer
(now Rue Denfert-Rochereau), near the Observatory, and the
windows looked southward, over a large, bushy garden. Proud
hon was delighted with the place, where he was to remain for the
next five years; it was in its garden that Courbet painted him
sitting with his books and papers on the steps of his summer
house, clad in his worker’s blouse and his heavy shoes, the in
tellectual patriarch surrounded by his sturdy, playing children.
His daughters throve in the more healthy atmosphere. Catherine
was ‘splendid,’ and Proudhon was sure that the change o f air and
the acquisition of sunshine saved the life of Marcel le, who had
been suffering from inflammation o f the lungs. But, for all these
advantages, the extra rent he had to pay was a severe burden on
his unsure resources, strained already by his wife’s third preg
nancy, which had put him under the necessity of finding a Franc-
Comtois maid to assist with the housework and the care of the
children.
Indeed, financial anxiety and the fear of discrimination alike
became so acute in Proudhon’s mind that the earlier part o f 1853
was dominated by a frantic search for any kind o f employment
that might give security to his growing family. He wrote memoirs
for the Gauthiers on a proposed packet-boat service to Rio, and
advised English capitalists who wished to finance railways in
Switzerland. He was in contact with promoters who hoped to
form an agricultural credit bank, and with yet others who planned
to buy large estates and resell them as small farms.
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE