tion o f the ineptitude of officials and o f the natural practical
abilities of the peasantry to whom he belonged.
After further persuasion, Proudhon finally agreed to give a
trial to the profession of editing; it lasted less than a day.
Having written his first article, he handed it to the office boy,
telling him to take it to the printer and return in a quarter of an
hour. The boy replied that it would take more than an hour.
‘How is that ?’
‘The Prefecture is not so very near, and the Prefect will need
some time to read the article and give it his authorisation.’
This was enough for Proudhon. He threw his article in the fire
and walked out of his office. ‘ Confess that in all the world I am
the man most incapable of doing the work I had undertaken,’ he
wrote next day to Muiron. ‘Besides, I believe our principles do
not agree very well; and as I have told you, though I have no
foregone conclusions about many things, I hold to my principles,
I will never sacrifice them, whatever may happen to me; I am con
tent with my position as an artisan.’
It was indeed to his trade that he returned. Immediately after
wards he was approached by Auguste Javel, a printer o f Arbois,
thirty miles from Besangon. Javel had been commissioned to
print a great number of mediaeval documents in Latin and
Comtois dialect. He could think of no compositor more capable
of this task than his friend Proudhon, whom he immediately
sought out. ‘Arbois?’ said Proudhon. ‘The wine is good there,
the wine growers are republican, the neighbourhood is pictur
esque. I accept.’ Javel’s account o f this stay at Arbois is the best
early portrait o f Proudhon as a young printing worker with
intellectual ambitions.
On departing from Besangon, Javel suggested that they should
take the coach. ‘Not at all,’ Proudhon replied scornfully. ‘I have
good legs and ten leagues do not frighten me. Take the coach if
you like.’ He set off early in the morning on his walk through the
Comtois hills, and arrived at Arbois by the evening, still fresh and
inclined to talk. Javel offered him hospitality, but Proudhon
refused, saying: ‘Y ou have a wife and children, you need your
freedom, and I need mine. Help me to find a house where I can
have a room o f my own, where my meals can be served when
I need them, without interrupting my reading. That is all I
ask.’
THE HILLS OF THE JURA