'I am thoroughly convinced that if the inquisition of the Republic does not kill our newspaper, it will be the best newspaper in Europe.'
Even now I am convinced of this. But how Proudhon and I could think that Napoleon's government, which never stood on ceremony, would put up with a paper like that, it is difficult to explain.
Proudhon was pleased with my letter, and wrote to me on the 15th of December from the Conciergerie prison:
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
424
'I am very glad to have been associated with you in the �arne or similar work. I, too, have written something in the nature of the philosophy9 of revolution under the title of The Confessions of a Revolutionary. You will not perhaps find in it the verve barbare to which you have been trained by German philosophy.
Do not forge� that I am writing for the French who, for a ll their revolutionary fire, are, it must be admitted, far inferior to their role. However limited my view may be, it is a hundred thousand toises higher than the loftiest heights of our journalistic, academic and literary world. I have enough in me to be a giant among them for another ten years.
'I entirely share your opinion of the so-called Republicans; of course, they are only one species of the whole genus doctrinaire.
As regards these questions there is no need for us to try to convince each other; you will find in me and my colleagues men who will go hand in hand with you . . . .
'I too think a peaceful methodical advance by imperceptible transitions, such as the political economists and philosophical historians want, is no longer possible for the revolution; we must make fearful leaps. But as journalists announcing the coming catastrophe, it is not for us to present it as something inevitable and just, or we shall be hated and kicked out; and we have got to live . . . .'
The paper was a wonderful success. Proudhon from his prison cell conducted his orchestra in masterly fashion. His articles were full of originality, fire and that exasperation which is fanned by imprisonment.
'What are you, 1'11. le President?' he writes in one article, speaking of Napoleon; 'tell us-man, woman, hermaphrodite, beast or fish?' And we still thought that such a paper might be kept going!
The subscribers were not numerous, but the street sales were large; thirty-live thousand to forty thousand copies a day were sold. The sale of particularly remarkable numbers, those, for instance, in which Proudhon's articles appeared, was even greater; fifty thousand to sixty thousand were printed, and often on the following day copies were being sold for a franc instead of a sou.10
But for all that, hy the 1 st of March, that is, six months later, 9 I had then published Vom andern Ufer (From the Other Shore ) .
Ill My answer t o the speech of Donoso Corts of which fifty thousand copies were printed, was sold out : awl when two or three days later I asked for a few copies for myself. they had to be searched for and bought in bookshops.
Paris-Italy-Paris
425
not only was there no cash in hand, but already part of the guarantee fund had gone in payment of fines. Ruin was inevitable ;md Proudhon hastened it considerablv. This was how it happened. On one occasion at his rooms in Ste Pelagie, I found d'Alton-Shee and two of the editors. D'Alton-Shee is that peer of France who frightened all the peers by his answer from the platform to the question,
'Why, are you not a Catholic?'
'No ! and what's more, I am not a Christian at all, and I don't know whether I am a deist.'
He was saying to Proudhon that the last numbers of the Voix du Peuple were feeble: Proudhon was looking through them and growing more and more morose; then, thoroughly incensed, he turned to the editors:
'What is the meaning of thisJ You take advantage of my being in prison, and go to sleep there in the office. No, gentlemen: if you go on like this I shall refuse to have anything to do with the paper, and shall publish the grounds for my refusal. I don't want my name to be dragged in the mud ; you need someone to stand behind you and look over every line. The public takes it for my newspaper: no, I must put a stop to this. To-morrow I shall send an article to cancel the bad effects of your scribbling, and I shall sho\v how I understand what ought to be the spirit of our paper.'
Seeing his irritation, it might have been expected that the article would not be of the most moderate, but he surpassed our expectations: his 'Vive [' Empercur!' was a dithyramb of ironyfrightful, virulent irony.
In addition to a new action against the paper the government avenged itself on Proudhon in its own way. He was transferred to a horrible room-that is, given a far worse one than before: the window was half boarded up so that nothing could be seen but the sky; no one was admitted to see him, and a special sentry was stationed at the door. And these measures, unseemly for the correction of a naughty boy of sixteen, were taken seven years ago against one of the greatest thinkers of our age. Men have grown no V\'iser since the days of Socrates, no wiser since the days of Galileo; they have only become more petty. This disrespect for genius, however, is a new phenomenon that has reappeared during the last ten years. From the time of the Renaissance talent has to some extent become a protection ; neither Spinoza nor Lessing \vas shut in a dark room or stood in a corner. Such men are sometimes persecuted and killed, but they are not humiliated in trivial ways; they are sent to the scaffold, but not to the workhouse.
Bourgeois Imperial France is fond of equality.
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
426
Though persecuted, Proudhon still struggled in his chains; he still made an effort to bring out the Voix du Peuple in 1 850; but this attempt was strangled at once. My guarantee money had been seized to the last farthing; the one man in France who still had something to sny had no choice but to be silent.
I saw Proudhon in Ste Pelagic; for the last time.1 1 I was being expelled from France, while he still had two years of prison. It was a mournful parting; there was no shadow of hope in the near future. Proudhon maintained a concentrated silence, whilst I wns boiling with vexation; \\"e both had many thoughts in our minds, but no desire to speak.
I have heard a great dcal of his roughness, rudcssc, and intolerancc; I ha ,·e had no expcril•nce of anything like it in my own case. "'hat soft people cnll his harshness was the tense muscle of the fighter; his scowling brow showed only the powerful working of his mind: in his anger he reminded me of a wrathful Luther or of Cromwell ridiculing the Rump. He knew that I understood him and, knowing too how few did understand him, appreciated it. He knew that he \vas considered an undemonstrative man; and hearing from Michclet of the disaster that had overtaken my mother and Kolya, he wrote to me from Ste Pelagic, among other things: 'Is it possible that fate must attack us from that dircction tooJ I cannot get over this terrible calamity.