to bear; by the end of the year the family was so poor that
Euphrasie, who was pregnant again, had been forced to return to
her embroidery. The virtues o f poverty had long been a theme of
Proudhon’s eloquence, but now he felt that even virtues should
not be allowed to go too far, and he regarded with consternation
his own chronic tendency towards impecuniosity. ‘I feel that in
our century poverty is nothing to an intelligent man,’ he told
Maurice. ‘Nevertheless, it is a level below which one must not
descend... But unfortunately I am o f a race which up to the
present has not been able to raise itself above want... Am I
destined to see myself more indigent, more miserable, more
deprived than birth has already made me, than I felt myself up
to eighteen? I do not know. But while I despise fortune, fortune
takes her revenge for my contempt.’
His situation was made even worse during the spring o f 1856,
when he fell into a disorder, partly physical and partly psycho
logical, which resulted in an almost complete inability to write or
think. It was something more than the usual ‘wridng block’ with
which most intellectuals are familiar, for a letter to Dr. Cretin
suggests that his condition was an intensification o f a long-standing
nervous irritability which should be taken into account in con
sidering the sometimes erratic nature o f his thoughts and actions.
‘For nearly twenty years,’ he said, ‘I have found that after a
sharp emotion my brain is as if paralysed; my pulse becomes slight,
my breathing is weak, I have spasms, my head turns, I stumble
like a drunken man, etc. I overcome this general stupefaction,
which seems to me to have a distinct resemblance to catalepsy,
by movement, deep breathing, fresh air, gymnastic exercise, etc.
While the crisis lasts, I experience an emptiness of the mind, a
general distress, vertigo, inability to sleep, to think, to read, etc.’
But, while previous attacks had been of short duration (‘a few
hours’) and had only followed exceptional stimuli, the present
one had already lasted a whole month and seemed to have reached
a chronic condition. Proudhon felt not merely ‘a complete in
capacity to work,’ but also ‘a real weakening o f powers,’ and this,
in his opinion, without having overworked. He ascribed the dis
order to some ‘accidental cause’ (‘I know nothing in my life and
habits that could have caused such a condition’), and it is surprising
that he did not make the obvious connection with the cholera
that had almost killed him little more than half a year before.
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE