THE EXILEmental hazards o f exile a great deal more easily than some o f his
less adaptable fellows.
2
Meanwhile the course o f Bonapartists justice had gone its way.
On the day o f his flight, Proudhon received a summons to
appear before the Court of Appeal on the 28th July. He answered
from Belgium that this date did not give him time to prepare his
defensive memoir o f 200 pages. The court confirmed his sentence
by default, but he was allowed to make opposition to the judg
ment, and the final hearing was adjourned until November.
Proudhon decided to base his future conduct on the way his
memoir was treated by the authorities; if they let it circulate
freely in France, so that his case became generally known, he
would return and face the Court o f Appeal. The publication of
the memoir was undertaken by a Parisian named Lebegue, who
had settled in Brussels and opened a small publishing house. It
appeared in mid-September, under the title o f La Justice Pour-
suivie par I’Egtise, but, since it adds nothing new to Proudhon’s
thought, it need detain us little. The author himself described it
as ‘instructive, interesting, amusing,’ and all these things are
true; beyond that, it was also an excellent defence o f free speech.
On the 22nd September, Proudhon sent a copy to the French
Minister o f the Interior, asking him to decide whether it should
be admitted to France. ‘If you judge otherwise,’ he told him,
‘I tell you with sorrow that I shall see myself under the necessity
of remaining where I am and renouncing my fatherland.’
This task finished, he departed, clad in his workman’s blouse
and with a pack on his back, for a walking holiday in the hills of
the Ardennes. His companions were Felix Delhasse, a wealthy
Belgian man of letters who remained his close and generous
friend for the rest of his life, and Thore, a fellow expatriate.
They walked by the rivers of that green country, the Vestre, the
Ourthe, the Aublade, stepped over the frontier into Prussian
territory at Malmedy, and visited the watering-place o f Spa,
where Proudhon found the gambling-houses ‘ignoble and dread
ful.’ They made a trip to the industrial town of Verviers, and
returned down the Meuse to Maestricht, which Proudhon decided
would be a pleasant and quiet place to inhabit if he should ever
leave Brussels. They returned to the capital on the 4th October.