THE STRICKEN YEARS
During December it became evident that Proudhon’s heart
was gravely affected, while his limbs swelled, and he found it
almost impossible to sleep. Yet, despite this progressive physical
decay, his mental faculties remained as acute as ever, and on his
bed of sickness he dictated to Gustave Chaudey the final passages
o f his last book, which he called D e la Capacite Politique des Classes
ouvrilres.
Once again, his friends rallied to give him what help they could.
The generous Delhasse, hearing o f his extremity, sent a further
1,000 francs, and there survives a pathetic letter o f thanks in
Catherine’s childish hand. ‘Your friendship, which already we
knew so well, has moved my father to tears. He alone is capable,
when he returns to health, of depicting the sentiments he feels.’
The ten doctors— all of them friends— who had attended
Proudhon, not to mention such amateur physicians as Bergmann
and Squire Bessetaux, united in asserting that he could still be
cured, but Proudhon became increasingly sceptical. Already, ask
ing Cretin in October to be frank about his condition, he had
said: ‘Do not let us die like fools or cowards; let us die worthily
and like brave men.’ And now, following the example of his
father and brother, he looked with stoical resignation to his
approaching end, and in a courageous letter which Catherine
wrote to Maguet at his dictation on the 4th January, 1865, he
told the reasons why he felt that death was near.
‘The sickness has made progress with an unheard-of rapidity... A fortnight ago the sick man still had the strength to eat a
meal; now he refuses to eat because mastication tires and suffo
cates him. A fortnight ago, he did not stay in bed during the day;
now, if it depended on him, he would not rise at all. A fortnight
ago, as I told you, his crises were hardly one or two a week; now
he lives in a continuous crisis, and in a fortnight, if this progress
is not halted, my father claims that he will be able to rise no
more... With all that he maintains a healthy reason, and all his
liberty o f thought, which is exactly why the more the doctors
examine him, the more hopes they conceive— and the more they
are deceived. The divorce between body and spirit is pronounced.
What is called life has become an incompatibility.’
It was Proudhon who was right, and on the 12th January he
took his formidable pen for the last time to scrawl his initials to
a letter thanking Buzon for a present o f fruit, and saying: ‘A t the