THE EXILEEuphrasie. ‘I only take it temporarily, in order to maintain my
incognito so far as the public is concerned.’
In fact, he went almost immediately to the Director o f the
Surete Publique in Brussels and informed this official o f his
situation. He was recommended to make a request for a permit
o f residence to the Minister o f the Interior, which he did in
pompous terms, asking ‘permission to philosophise among you,
as Spinoza formerly philosophised at the Hague, Descartes at
Stockholm, Voltaire at Ferney.’ He was allowed to remain.
Among the few score French expatriates in the city he was
accepted with warmth, for the Brussels tmigris were not addicted
to the bitter sectarianism o f their fellows in London. He was
reunited with his friend, Madier-Montjau, who gave prominence
to Justice in a course of lectures at Antwerp, and one day in the
street he met Victor Considerant, whom he had imagined dead,
but who had in fact just returned from Texas, where he had tried
unsuccessfully to unite the disparate Utopian groups. Finally, he
found in Brussels his German friend o f twelve years ago, Karl
Gruen.
His first reaction to exile was very near despair, and he felt
that, if his sentence had not been so long, prison might have
been preferable. He was bored by his relatively solitary life in a
dull city, the excitement o f his flight had renewed his catarrhal
afflictions, and he found the climate so damp that in comparison
he likened the air o f the Rue d’Enfer to that o f a mountain peak.
He had not been in Brussels more than three days before he was
telling Euphrasie that, since he did not intend to return to an
enforced silence in France, he must arrange for his family to join
him as soon as possible. ‘Without that I shall be like the lion in
the menagerie whose little dog was taken away from him and
who ended by dying o f grief.’
His eventual reconciliation with a place of abode that at first
had seemed so unsympathetic was due largely to the generous
welcome, not only o f the exiles, but also o f the Belgian liberals.
Little more than a week after his arrival he told Pilhes, ‘I have
already met with precious sympathy,’ and his circle o f acquaint
ances among the native writers and scholars increased steadily.
From the beginning he avoided becoming too closely involved
in the restricted group o f expatriates, and by finding his company
among the hospitable Belgians he weathered the material and