young people became flirtatious he would rise, politely wish
everybody a good evening, and flee shyly to his room.
Yet his very quietness attracted the girls of the house, who
nursed him when he developed a quinsy, and refused to take any
gift in return for these friendly services. According to Javel, the
younger daughter, Caroline, fell in love with him and remained
so for years afterwards. When Proudhon departed, and embraced
his friends with painful awkwardness, she said to him sadly: ‘You
will soon have forgotten us.’
‘N o,’ he replied. ‘One does not forget in that way the people
whom one has become used to loving and who deserve it.’ But
Caroline seems to have remembered longer and more deeply
than Proudhon. In his correspondence and notebooks we can
find no sign that he recollected with any particular vividness these
friends o f a season. Caroline, on the other hand, followed his
career with the closest attention, and for years afterwards would
anxiously ask Javel for news o f him. She remained single, and in
1849, when Proudhon was imprisoned, she travelled to Paris in
order to see him. Having learnt that he had married, she returned
and never spoke o f him again. It was a devotion whose constancy
Proudhon would have appreciated had he been aware o f it, but,
so far as we can tell, he never was.6
Proudhon returned to Besangon early in 1833, and he was not
long at home before the news arrived that his brother Jean-
Etienne had died while undergoing his military training. ‘That
death,’ said Proudhon years later, ‘finally made me an irrecon
cilable enemy o f the existing order,’ and he told Alexander
Herzen: ‘Twenty years ago I lost a brother, a young soldier,
through the tyranny o f an embezzling captain, who wished to
force him into becoming the accomplice o f his peculations, and,
by his vexations, drove him to suicide.’
Beyond this account we have no further details, and also no
means o f checking the accusation which Proudhon directed
against the superior officer, though the corruption that existed
in all branches o f the state apparatus under the July Monarchy
makes its correctness seem probable. Yet, in so far as the event
affected Proudhon personally, these details are irrelevant; it is
THE HILLS OF THE JURA