Proudhon - A Biography

THE EXILE
politan I become. A translation o f Justice was being prepared in
Spain. Tw o hundred copies were ordered for Italy. He was
‘almost naturalised’ in Germany. A Tsarist officer brought him
felicitations from Tomsk. And in April, i860, Tolstoy called,
and they passed together a great part o f the few days which the
Russian writer spent in Brussels. They discussed the emancipation
of the serfs, and Tolstoy said that not until he had travelled in
Western Europe had he been able to understand the emphasis
Proudhon placed on attacking Catholicism. Proudhon told Herzen
that Mr. Tolstoy’ stood out with great individuality among the
many Russians who had visited him.
France itself the renewal o f his prestige was shown by the
number o f visitors from that country who made a point o f calling
on him. In the summer o f i860 there was Etienne Arago, the
republican astronomer, and about the same time appeared a
representative o f the extreme opposing faction, in the person of
a legitimist leader whom Proudhon referred to as ‘the Viscount
X X X .’ Early in 1861 his old rival Blanqui called; Proudhon was
distressed to find the conspirator ‘much aged’ by the series of
imprisonments that had eaten away half his life. Even Victor
Hugo, encountered at the house o f a common friend, appeared
affable, and offered his hand, which Proudhon accepted. ‘But it
was limited to that. I remain on my dunghill and he on his. We
are not made for each other.’
But what gratified Proudhon most was the evidence that
French working-class interest in his ideas was emerging on a
much wider scale than at any time since 1848. In August, i860,
he entertained ‘a little deputation from a fine society o f Rouen
workers, who ask me for a revolutionary programme for the day
after tomorrow,’ and, although he noted ironically that they
acted as if we were on the eve o f February,’ he was clearly
pleased that they should have chosen to approach him. Later
there arrived from Paris the emissaries o f other groups o f workers
anxious for his advice, but Proudhon was careful not to place
too high a value on these manifestations o f interest. ‘I do not
want adventures; my age does not permit them,’ .he had told
Bergmann a few years before, and it was with due caution that
he viewed the possibility o f becoming in some degree an intellec­
tual if not a political leader among the French workers. When
Darimon laid too optimistic an interpretation on the visits of