angelic, so divine; what in my dreams o f love (wherein faith in
God, in the immortal soul, in religious practice, mingled and
combined with faith in infinite love) made my religion so precious
to me.... I was Christian because I was in love, in love because
I was Christian— I mean religious.’
That his love was incompletely fulfilled seems evident, for in
De la Justice (1858) he insists that the experience actually pro
longed his sexual innocence, while in Les Contradictions Econo-
miques, written, like the diary note, in 1846, he rhapsodises: ‘What
a memory for a man’s heart in after years, to have been in his
green youth the guardian, the companion, the participant of the
virginity of a young girl.’ Finally, there are some reflections in a
letter of 1841 which, though expressed generally, clearly have
reference to his own past experience. ‘I always console myself
with the reflection... that the first loves which, in chaste souls,
leave such deep traces, have often the merit o f preparing a more
solid happiness for a second attachment. In general, my dear
friend, young lovers do not know how to be happy in their love
and to get the most out of it; they adore each other in a silly way,
but their spirits have more vivacity and fire than true warmth;
often they do not know each other or realise each other’s true
value. In other words, the art and knowledge of reciprocation
are lacking in their passion.’
These are the only glimpses we have o f this youthful relation
ship. It is possible that a half-arrogant gaucherie, bred o f child
hood humiliation, may have been at least partly responsible for
its failure to endure, or that Proudhon’s poverty may have pre
vented him from making the offer of an early marriage which the
girl perhaps expected. Perhaps also his mother’s influence played
some part, for he tells us that when she saw him ‘troubled by the
dreams of youth,’ she counselled caution, saying: ‘Never speak of
love to a girl, even when you propose to marry her.’ But these
are conjectures, and we must leave this misty relationship, to tell
what happened to the religious upsurge that accompanied it.
In Proudhon’s day Besangon was an important religious centre
in Eastern France; its seminaries were celebrated by Stendhal in
jLe Rouge et le Noir, and there existed among its priests a tradition
of scholarship which made them copious producers of devotional
literature. The printing presses were therefore devoted largely to
religious treatises, and thus Proudhon was introduced to many
THE HILLS OF THE JURA