THE EXILECan you not manage on your return, if you do return, in such a
way that this calm may continue ?’
His temper was not improved when he received a letter from
his brother-in-law Theodore assuring him that he might return
to Paris with impunity. He interpreted this Piegard interference
in his affairs as a sign o f disloyalty on Euphrasie’s part, and,
ignoring Theodore, he wrote to her angrily: ‘I am vexed by all
this tittle-tattle, which can only serve to augment your regrets
and to irritate me. No, I tell you, I will not return under such
conditions, and if staying in Belgium is painful to you, very well,
I have told you that I do not want you to be a martyr. Let us
come to an arrangement, and stay where you are. I will see that
neither you nor the children lack for anything, and I will follow
my destiny alone to the end.’
The suggestion of disloyalty was enough to make Euphrasie
abandon immediately her thoughts of remaining in Paris, and
she returned on the ioth October, bringing another instalment
of the misfortunes that pursued Proudhon so consistently during
these years, for the two children had contracted scarlatina, and
Euphrasie herself was taken ill a few days afterwards. Proudhon
alone escaped, and for six weeks he made beds and cooked and
tended the sick. His wife had barely reached convalescence when
Stephanie’s illness passed into a dangerous dropsical condition.
A t one time Proudhon had reconciled himself to the untimely
loss of a third child, but almost miraculously she passed through
the critical hours, and the slow process o f recovery began.
Only in December did Proudhon find it possible to resume
writing. ‘How would you have had me work, with this disorder
around me?’ he protested to his fellow exile Rolland on the 3rd
of that month. ‘During the day doctors and visitors, during the
night vigils, my wife disabled, the household upside down.
Yesterday I renewed my provision of pens, paper and ink. That
is all.’ By the middle of the month, however, he was again
writing vigorously on his study of war and peace. His enthusiasm
was renewed, and he told Chaudey that his subject was ‘grand,
sublime and vast.’
But this work offered no immediate solution to his unusually
acute financial situation, and he complained with justification to
Mathey that 1859 bad been ‘an ill-starred year.’ ‘Apart from the
slight difference that there may be between three years in the