‘The person I addressed was a little, chubby, plump, self-satis
fied man, with gold-rimmed spectacles, who certainly did not
seem prepared for such a demand... He was M. Guieu, nick
named Tripette. “ Sir,” he said to me as he hopped about in his arm
chair, “ your demand is unprecedented, and you misinterpret your
passport. It means that, if you are attacked or robbed, authority
will undertake your defence; that is all!” ’
Proudhon argued that these were rights which applied to every
body, and that the protection mentioned in a passport must be
something more. Thereupon, Tripette offered him fifteen cents a
league to pay his way home; Proudhon proudly rejected this offer
as alms, and then decided that the man might be better than the
functionary— for Tripette had a ‘Christian face.’ ‘Since your office
does not allow you to do justice to my request,’ he said, ‘give me
your advice. If need be, I can make myself useful elsewhere than in
a printing shop, and I despise nothing. What do you advise me?’
‘To go away,’ snapped Tripette, impatient at such a persistent
stickler for rights.
‘I sized up this personage,’ Proudhon records. ‘The blood of old
Tournesi rose to my head. “ Very well, Mr. Mayor,” I said to him
through clenched teeth, “ I promise to remember this audience.” ’
And remember it he did, long and bitterly; twenty-six years later,
in De la Justice, he told the story in every detail.
It was a stage in a revolutionary’s education, but if this incident
taught Proudhon the negative aspect o f authority, he was soon to
learn its positive malignance as well. He found work for a while
in Draguignan, and here he heard that Jean-Etienne, the brother
he loved more than anyone else in the world, had been unlucky
in the draw for military service. Had the Proudhons been wealthy
they might have bought a substitute; as it was, Jean-Etienne had
no choice, and, with his potentialities for earning lost, Pierre-
Joseph would have to return to help his parents. He condoled
with his mother, ‘for you in particular have most need of consola
tion in these sad circumstances,’ but he also indulged in an out
burst o f bitterness in which he seemed to interpret his brother’s
misfortune as a blow directed by fate against himself. ‘How des
tiny pursues me with its animosity! It seems as if the fatality that
follows me attaches itself to all whom J approach... I some
times go into transports o f rage which are frightening and laugh
able at the same time; I do not know what to do with myself. I
THE HILLS OF THE JURA