THE EXILEworkers’ representatives, he expressed his doubts at some
length.
‘As to our concluding from this isolated fact the existence o f a
Proudhonian party, since you use the term, I believe that would be
exposing ourselves to a great illusion. The people can be o f a
Blanquist, Mazzinian or Garibaldian party, that is to say o f a
party where one believes, where one conspires, where one fights;
they are never of a party where one reasons and thinks. I have
cause to believe, it is true, that since the coup d’etat the public
which from time to time shows me its goodwill has increased
rather than diminished; there is hardly a week that does not give
me proofs of this. But that elite of readers does not form a party;
they are people who ask me for books, for ideas, for discussion,
for philosophic investigation, and who, for the most part, would
abandon me tomorrow with contempt if I spoke to them of
creating a party and forming themselves, under my initiative,
into a secret society.’
But, even though he was careful not to exaggerate his follow
ing, the sense of having a renewed and widened support did
much to maintain Proudhon’s will during the difficult early days
o f i860, and there was a real conviction behind his remark to
Michelet: ‘I regain strength and resolution. M y morale has never
been better.’
6
In May, i860, Proudhon’s life was clouded anew by the deaths
of his brother Charles and his cousin Melchior. When he heard
that Charles was dead, he was overcome with a feeling of guilt
because he had not done more for the unfortunate blacksmith.
‘I expected his death for several years,’ he told Rolland. ‘Never
theless, it afflicts me, or rather renews my regrets when I think
that he, my father, my mother, all my family, counted on me, that
they expected some little well-being from me, and that, through
my socialist impulses, I placed myself outside the conditions of
success, outside the communion o f fortune.... A t the moment
when I write to you I feel all too strongly that my children will
be no better treated by me than my brothers were.’
Yet, loaded with debts though he already was, he raised further
loans to provide the money that would apprentice his brother’s
sons and establish his deaf and witless widow in some place where