His appeal to Cretin was couched in the most agonising terms.
‘N ot to work, dear friend, is for me worse than typhus or cholera;
it is death... Can you make me work, make me finish my book,
at least?’ But, despite the efforts o f his physician friends, his
condition changed only slowly, and it was not until the beginning
o f June that he began to feel any measure o f relief.
A t this time his thoughts often assumed an understandably
melancholy tone, and early in May, writing to one o f his friends
to announce the proximate birth o f a fourth child (Charlotte was
born a few days later), he listed his anxieties and tried, a little
unconvincingly, to give himself encouraging answers. ‘W hy do I
disturb myself? And what do I fear? I live from day to day; what
harm is there in that? I am sometimes in difficulties; it is a recall
to order and foresight. I shall make my daughters into working
girls; have they a right to ask anything more? I admit that my
death would make them run great risks, but who today can say
he is sure o f anything ?’ Beneath the self-conscious bravado o f his
concluding statement— ‘I must suffer a little and feel the goad
from time to time’— one feels a hollow insecurity pervading
Proudhon’s view o f his condition.
In mid-summer he decided, on the advice o f Cretin, to travel to
the Franche-Comte with Charles Beslay, in the hope of recovering
his health by a brief return to the country. He took the opportunity
to visit many old friends. In Dijon he went to see Tissot; in Besan-
gon he stayed with Guillemin and met Micaud and Maurice,
Mathey and various cousins, including old Melchior Proudhon,
who caused him a certain anxiety because, in his tenth decade, the
aged revolutionary was showing a tendency to slip back towards
the Church he had abandoned in 1789.
Dr. Maguet joined him in Besangon, and took him to Dam-
pierre-sur-Salon; there the two friends walked in the hills and
bathed in the river, and from the fresh air and exercise Proudhon’s
vitality began to return. He was so pleased that he even thought
for a few days o f returning to live in his native province. ‘I begin
to regret not having in this neighbourhood some property where
I could instal myself with you and our dear little girls,’ he told
Euphrasie. ‘If my work is successful, I will tell you of my projects
and we will look together. .. What has happened to me is clearly
a warning. I am forty-seven years and five months old; I am no
longer a young man; I must learn to regulate my life, my work and
THE PALADIN OF JUSTICE