took the opportunity to laugh at everybody, deputies, electors and
government alike, and that it pleased few of his fellow citizens.
He discussed literature extensively with Ackermann, and ad
vanced some ideas on the universal presence of the germ of
poetry which form an interesting anticipation of his later ideas
on the role of the artist. ‘We all have the innate feeling o f poetry
and a beginning o f poetic talent,’ he argued. ‘Boileau thought so,
do not doubt it, just like Goethe; but he did not admit that this
germ in its ordinary proportion could become through work
what one saw in Homer; that was all his thesis and I find he was
right. We are all appreciators, because we all have the germ; we
are not makers, because we do not all receive fertilisation.’
And, as always, he suffered from a sustained financial shortage,
all the worse since his pension had ended without his shedding
any o f the burdens imposed by business debts or the needs of his
family. This poverty and the cares o f his press prevented him
from travelling to Strasbourg in the autumn to attend a philo
logical congress, and forced him to write to Antoine Gauthier
asking him humbly for a loan of 150 francs.
Towards the end of the year his hopes of bettering his position
were again centred around the possibility that he might obtain
a position in the local government service. ‘The most influential
personages in the town’ were using their efforts to help him; the
Prefect seemed ‘well disposed.’ He had even heard that the
Archbishop was supporting the idea o f finding him a position;
with such backing, he told Bergmann, he could not fail to
succeed. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he admitted, ‘my friends in
Besangon think I am lulling myself with illusions. Perhaps they
are not wrong. However it may be, there will be something new
in my life before Easter.’
One cannot help feeling that Proudhon’s friends were well
justified in suspecting him of illusionism, for it is difficult to
imagine that the powerful conservatives of Besangon did not see
through the flimsy veil of respectability with which this ebullient
iconoclast draped himself. It certainly seems unlikely that the
Archbishop had in fact shown any inclination to favour him and,
as for the Prefect, the inaccuracy o f the rumour that he was
‘well disposed’ is shown clearly in the letter which Proudhon
wrote to Bergmann in February, 1843, after he had learnt that he
would not gain his appointment.
THE CRITIC OF PROPERTY