Proudhon - A Biography

THE CRITIC OF PROPERTY
‘The Prefect would not agree to grant me anything,’ he related.
‘I do not know his true motives. As my friends and sponsors all
maintain a deep silence on the discomfiture o f their hopes regard­
ing me, I presume that the causes o f my rejection come from my
past and from the scanty hope they have of seeing me change my
sentiments. What confirms me in that opinion is that when a
member of our municipality suggested to the mayor that he should
secure my services, the latter... replied that he feared I might
make fools and instruments of them, as I had done o f the Academi­
cians.’
The mayor’s attitude was less puzzling than Proudhon’s own
naive optimism or the motives o f those ‘influential’ friends who
encouraged his expectations. The latter can hardly have been
converted to his opinions, and perhaps the most reasonable
explanation for their conduct is that they may have hoped his
radicalism would be mitigated when he found himself in a secure
position. This view is implied in the words of Dr. Delacroix, one
of his sympathisers at that time, which are recorded by Sainte-
Beuve: ‘The day I saw Proudhon escape from us and throw him­
self once again into the fray, the day above all when I saw him
led away by the daily struggle and obliged at the same time to
face the world, I did not for one moment doubt his glorious and
unhappy future. For me he was a man and a friend lost.’
Indeed, while Proudhon was far from being a ‘lost man’ in the
larger sense, he soon became so to his provincial circle. He now
realised that there was no hope o f a career for him in Besangon,
and his departure was facilitated in the spring of 1843 by the sale
of his printing press to a workman named Bintot; the price was
very low, and it left him 7,000 francs in debt, mostly to Maurice,
who originally financed the business. It was an obligation that
he never fully liquidated.
Very shortly afterwards, Antoine Gauthier offered him a
secretarial position in Lyons; though never a disciple of Proudhon,
Gauthier always appreciated his old school-friend’s talents and
sympathised with his misfortunes. Proudhon accepted, and to­
wards the end o f April he left the Franche-Comte. Except for
brief visits, he never returned to the provincial life in which he
had been bred. Yet, though his life henceforward was spent in
large cities, Lyons, Paris and Brussels, the mark o f his Franc-
Comtois origin survived; fundamentally, his attitude on social