THE EXILE
revolutionary,’ Proudhon confided to Victor Pilhes. ‘My wife
rebels in her own manner, and in the things that interest her you
will one day see that my paternal and conjugal authority has been
demolished. Ah, how quickly I would be consoled if I saw the
good people of Paris animated by such sentiments 1 ’
But while her mother revolted against the kitchen, Catherine
was becoming more useful and willing in the household, and was
relieving Euphrasie of some of the many tasks that fell on her
now she had to spend much of her time in embroidery to pay for
the children’s school fees. ‘Catherine... sees to the lamp, lights
the fire when her mother is detained, warms my soup, hems
handkerchiefs, knits, but does not know how to protect herself
from the greengrocers, who rob her unmercifully.’
Proudhon was anxious to give his children an early sense of
the practical knowledge which his poor health made him fear
might become necessary in the event o f their being left without
provision. Accordingly, he made an elaborate financial arrange
ment by which he paid them for any good points they gained at
school and for any services they performed in the house. These
earnings they were encouraged to save against the time when they
would become independent, and Catherine, who was old enough
to think about such things, was promised ‘a drapery, needlework
and repairing establishment.’ Whatever one may say in criticism
of Proudhon’s patriarchal view o f household administration,
there was good sense in the way he refrained from bringing up
his daughters as ladies, and encouraged in them the realisation
that almost certainly they would have to live by their own abilities.
‘I set less store by fashionable talents,’ he declared, ‘than by good
feelings and the work of one’s hands.’
10
By the summer o f 1861 Proudhon had accepted the need for
an indefinite prolongation of his stay in Brussels and had returned
to work on his literary projects with as much application as if he
had a life to spend in exile. Having, in War and Peace, stated his
basic views of international relations, he now turned to the specific
problems of contemporary nationalism. He was one o f the few
liberals who realised the danger o f reaction implicit in the general
nationalist tradition inherited from 1848, and also in the particular