though be learnt to read well, the only books he had encountered
up to his tenth year were ‘the Gospels and the Four Aymon
Brothers,’ and a few provincial almanacs, fitting companions for
his naive rustic beliefs.
But Catherine Proudhon was anxious that her eldest son should
have an education that would give him something better than the
insecurity of rural artisanship, and in 1820, when the family was
once again in Besan$on, she set about seeking his admittance into
the city’s college. Through the influence of his father’s former
employer, he was granted a bursary, and his parents were saved
the fee of 120 francs a year which they certainly could not have
afforded to pay; the mere fact that their son could not work for
his keep was as much o f a hardship as they could support.
Poverty, indeed, created many difficulties in Pierre-Joseph’s
school life. He had neither hat nor shoes; he would go bare
headed to school and take off his sabots before entering a room
for fear their clatter might disturb his class-mates. ‘I was habitu
ally in need of the most necessary books; I made all my studies of
Latin without a dictionary; after having translated whatever my
memory provided, I left blank the words which were unknown to
me, and filled in the spaces at the school door. I suffered a hundred
punishments for having forgotten my books; it was because I had
none.’
Above all, there were the humiliations which any youth, parti
cularly one o f ‘most irritable self-esteem,’ as Proudhon described
himself, will inevitably encounter under such conditions. He learnt
in a hard way the truth of the local proverb: ‘It is not a crime to
be poor, it is worse.’ Most of the students were children of the
local burgesses, and, smarting under the real and imagined slights
o f his wealthier comrades, Pierre-Joseph developed a brusque ex
terior which armoured his timidity and concealed the real warmth
o f his nature. He soon gained the repute o f being surly and mis
anthropic, yet with some of his fellow students he formed friend
ships that were to be lifelong.
The initial transition from the freedom o f the fields to the re
strictions of a priestly education was not easy, and Pierre-Joseph
experienced a sense o f mental exile when the world of nature was
replaced by that o f ‘narratives and themes.’ But he had a natural
linguistic sense and soon became an adept Latinist. Nor did he
restrict his studies to school hours or to the set subjects. Besangon
6 *
THE HILLS OF THE JURA