THE PALADIN OF JUSTICEhealth, if I wish to accomplish my task and do my duty to the end.
I must also think o f those three little girls.’
His return to Paris, after almost a month, was irradiated by the
ability to observe, with fresh sight, the development of the daugh
ters whose future caused him so much anxiety. ‘Catherine begins
to use the needle,’ he told the Suchets, ‘but she refuses to learn
to read and has no clear idea of the duty o f obedience. However,
as she is affectionate and gentle, above all free from self-esteem,
we hope, by making use o f these sentiments, to inspire in her the
feeling of a severe virtue and to teach her that sacrifice without
which the human spirit is— and who knows better than you?—
like the souls o f animals... Stephanie is o f a stronger temperament
and a more generous blood than her elder sister; round as a ball,
red as an apple, a republican in petticoats!’
A few months afterwards, for the second time in two years,
Proudhon was stricken within that family into which the hostility
o f the outer world had made him withdraw, and in December his
fourth child, Charlotte, died, as he supposed, from complications
connected with her teething. ‘You know how we feel for these
little things,’ he lamented to one o f his friends, ‘with what heart
break we see them suffer! There was already the look, the smile,
love, a beginning o f recognition. That child had entered into my
soul.’
9
A t last, in the spring o f 1857, the early part o f the long treatise
on Justice into which the reply to de Mirecourt had grown began
to be composed by the printers, and it seemed to Proudhon that
his task was almost completed and that his material fortunes were
taking a more encouraging turn. The Garniers had recovered
sufficient courage to return his name to their catalogue, and had
promised to print a first edition of 6,500 copies. He hoped to earn
from 12,000 to 14,000 francs, which would pay his outstanding
debts and enable him to put some money aside for the future.
He was, however, rather premature in his hopes, since, owing to
perpetual delays caused largely by his recurrent attacks o f mental
debility, the book did not actually appear until a good year later.
A further diversion o f his energies occurred during the elec
tions for the legislative corps which took place in the summer of
1857 and which revealed the first significant fissures in the struc-