THE CRITIC OF PROPERTY
demean herself by forming an alliance with me. A girl of medium
fortune would sacrifice everything in paying my debts, after
which she would find herself with nothing but an unresourceful
husband.’
Instead, therefore, of seeking a wife, he worked hard at
putting his business on a better footing, and did so with some
success, for while on his arrival it was in a state o f ‘complete
holiday,’ by the New Year it was working fairly efficiently and
once again he decided that he would probably be a printer for the
rest of his life. By December, moreover, he had finished his essay,
which he intended to call Avertissement aux Proprietaires (Warning
to Proprietors), and his mood o f increased well-being was shown
when, at the beginning of 1842, he wrote a memorable letter to
Bergmann, with whom, as with his other friends, his corres
pondence had lapsed during his provincial seclusion. His optim
ism was ascendant, and though he expected ‘a rough year,’ he
believed it might be the last o f its kind. For one doing, he felt that
the Bisontins were not so unfriendly as he had imagined after his
dispute with the Academy. ‘Day by day I gain the sympathy of
my neighbours,’ he assured Bergmann. The municipal councillors,
he said, were even considering finding him employment as a
functionary, ‘so as to keep me among them,’ and his dreams
became so vivid that he declared: ‘In two years I shall be com
pletely, bag and baggage, within the government.’ What he meant
by this is not easy to determine. He can hardly have expected that
Louis-Philippe would suddenly invite M. Proudhon, the man of
paradox and attacker o f property, to sit as a minister in the royal
cabinet, and we can probably take his remark to mean rather that
he would be ideologically ‘in the government,’ that, as Sainte-
Beuve has suggested, the authorities would recognise his true
worth, would cease to molest him, and would even be influenced
by him to deal with the economic problems which were the basic
causes of popular discontent. Such illusions were very shortly to
receive a salutary shaking.
9
The Warning to Proprietors appeared on the 10th January, 1842.
It was shorter than the preceding essays, and more pyrotechnical,
for Proudhon had abandoned all pretence of a memoir designed