shareholder.’ And he finally declared: ‘We believe in a radical
transformation of society, in the direction o f freedom, personal
equality and the confederation of peoples, but we do not want it
to be either violent or plundering.’
The Manual sold well, though there is no means o f telling
whether its buyers were frustrated gamblers or revolutionaries in
search of hidden meanings. In March, 1854, a second edition
appeared, and there was a third and greatly enlarged edition in
1856, which Proudhon signed, thereby indicating his progressive
change in attitude towards the book. A t first he had regarded it
as ‘a repugnant and painful work.’ By 1854 he said that it ‘estab
lished clearly the revolutionary object, which has never been done
before,’ and that it was a ‘monstrous bomb thrown on the pave
ments of Paris.’ Still later it became ‘the most instructive work
of the epoch... for the extraordinary light it spreads on the
present time.’ His esteem had grown with its popularity, but his
change o f attitude may have been due partly to a feeling o f grati
tude towards the one piece o f writing that had helped to maintain
him during these years of adversity.
5
The cycle o f personal trouble that marks this period of Proud
hon’s life reached the level o f tragedy during the summer of 1854.
Early in August the household in the Rue d’Enfer was stricken
with the cholera which was endemic in Paris at this time, and all
its members were afflicted. Marcelle died, and it was only on the
1st September that Proudhon himself was well enough to an
nounce the fact to Bergmann.
‘Three weeks ago, I was hit by the epidemic, and death visited
me. I lost one of my daughters aged nearly three years; she was as
if struck by lightning. A t the moment when they carried out her
corpse, I lay motionless, exhausted by diarrhoea, vomiting, pro
stration. Finally, homeopathy saved me, but I still have no feeling
in my legs... I cannot hold the pen and can hardly see it. Good
bye, dear Bergmann; look after your family.’
Later he was to tell how, while he lay in the crisis of his illness,
his wife had risen from her own bed to tend him, helped by relays
of his friends. It was she who had caused their dead child to be
taken to a neighbour’s house and had told him the benign false-
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE