dustry turned into a central bazaar where the merchants o f Paris
could display samples o f their products. It might become the
place o f meeting for consumers and producers; the latter would
no longer need to rent expensive shops in the centre o f Paris, and
so prices would be reduced, while the society running the perma
nent exhibition could organise exchange between producers and
begin the great experiment o f dispensing with money.
Only an enthusiast like Proudhon could have seen a Universal
Exhibition as a major engine in the social revolution, but he was
encouraged in his design by the fact that Jerome Bonaparte had
been appointed President of the Exhibition. He wrote a long
memoir setting out in detail the basis on which he thought the
scheme might be organised, he paid frequent visits to the Palais
Royal to press his idea by personal advocacy, he overwhelmed the
Prince with letters, he alternately exhilarated himself with extrava
gant hopes and fumed against the influence which the financiers
and the Saint-Simonians exerted over ‘Monsieur Isidore,’ as he
began contemptuously to call the Emperor. But Jerome Bonaparte
remained unconvinced, and the plan lay unpublished among
Proudhon’s papers until after his death.
His enthusiasm had, however, its embarrassing consequences,
for his contact over this and other questions with the Prince—
that expert political trimmer whom Maximilian o f Mexico likened
to ‘a worn-out basso from some obscure Italian opera house’—
soon brought him into ill favour with those o f the republican
expatriates who had remained friendly towards him when he was
excommunicated by the dogmatic Jacobins. Early in 1856,
Madame Madier-Montjau came to Paris from Belgium and visited
Proudhon. The turn o f the conversation soon made it evident that
she had really called to enquire into the reports that were being
circulated regarding his visits to Jerome. So disturbing did he
find the implications of her questioning that he wrote to Madier-
Montjau explaining his conduct.
‘I go to the Palais Royal,’ he admitted. ‘Yes, sometimes— ten
or twelve times in four years. Do I betray that democracy which
has devoted its hatred to me, do I compromise or dishonour it?
... In my eyes, socialism is the revolution. O f that revolution I
find myself, as in June, 1848, the first sentinel, and I have no
corporal to give me orders. I therefore do what seems good to
me; I see whom I wish, from the Prince Napoleon to Ferron.
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE