This time he had no difficulty in finding work as a corrector,
but, though he was not poor, his disgust with Parisian life
appears to have been even greater than on his first visit. ‘A
thousand causes make me abhor living in the capital and inspire
in me an inexpressible pity for its desperate population,’ he com
plained to his old teacher, Perennfes. ‘Everybody about me is
singing and laughing and restless; it seems as though to enjoy
themselves they must go into convulsions. The rich drain them
selves to the point of exhaustion; the poor work and save for a
month to be happy one night.’
He found a consolation in praising the French provinces and in
concluding that ‘the Franche-Comte can become an arch of the
human race.’ It was the exaggerated statement o f a countryman
lost in a metropolis, a defiant cry of mingled patriotism and
homesickness, but it also anticipated that line of thought, spring
ing out o f a distrust for centralisation, which was eventually to
make Proudhon one o f the great prophets of regionalism.
This sojourn in Paris was ended abruptly when, a few weeks
after his arrival there, the news reached Proudhon that his partner,
Lambert, had disappeared from home. On the 9th April, he
departed for the Franche-Comte, writing hurriedly to Pauthier:
‘Lambert, my colleague, is at this moment either dead or in a
state of complete lunacy. I am therefore going to replace him and
to guide our unfortunate barque. Goodbye for a long time to
linguistics and philosophyl’ He reached Besangon by the 15 th
April. Shortly afterwards, Lambert’s body was discovered in a
wood two leagues from Besangon.
Proudhon immediately set to work putting in order the
chaotic affairs of their partnership. But he had little zest for a
business that had involved him already in so much disappoint
ment, and he and Maurice decided to sell it at the earliest oppor
tunity. This virtual failure of his efforts to become a successful
master printer confirmed Proudhon in a decision, which he had
already been considering in Paris, to abandon the workshop and
embark on a life of scholarship. The Suard Pension, which Fallot
had held, would become available again in 1838, and now, with
one essay already published and a growing reputation among the
Besangon intellectuals, he felt that he stood a much better chance
o f winning it than in 1832.
In this hope he was encouraged by Pdrenn£s, who was now
THE HILLS OF THE JURA