One curiosity led to another, and he called for book after book, sometimes eight or ten at one sitting.The learned librarian, the friend and almost the brother of Charles Nodier, M.Weiss, approached him one day, and said, smiling, `But, my little friend, what do you wish to do with all these books?' The child raised his head, eyed his questioner, and replied: `What's that to you?' And the good M.Weiss remembers it to this day."Forced to earn his living, Proudhon could not continue his studies.He entered a printing-office in Besancon as a proof-reader.Becoming, soon after, a compositor, he made a tour of France in this capacity.At Toulon, where he found himself without money and without work, he had a scene with the mayor, which he describes in his work on "Justice."Sainte Beuve says that, after his tour of France, his service book being filled with good certificates, Proudhon was promoted to the position of foreman.But he does not tell us, for the reason that he had no knowledge of a letter written by Fallot, of which we never heard until six months since, that the printer at that time contemplated quitting his trade in order to become a teacher.
Towards 1829, Fallot, who was a little older than Proudhon, and who, after having obtained the Suard pension in 1832, died in his twenty-ninth year, while filling the position of assistant librarian at the Institute, was charged, Protestant though he was, with the revisal of a "Life of the Saints," which was published at Besancon.The book was in Latin, and Fallot added some notes which also were in Latin.
"But," says Sainte Beuve, "it happened that some errors escaped his attention, which Proudhon, then proof-reader in the printing office, did not fail to point out to him.Surprised at finding so good a Latin scholar in a workshop, he desired to make his acquaintance; and soon there sprung up between them a most earnest and intimate friendship: a friendship of the intellect and of the heart."Addressed to a printer between twenty-two and twenty- three years of age, and predicting in formal terms his future fame, Fallot's letter seems to us so interesting that we do not hesitate to reproduce it entire.
"PARIS, December 5, 1831.
"MY DEAR PROUDHON,--YOU have a right to be surprised at, and even dissatisfied with, my long delay in replying to your kind letter;I will tell you the cause of it.It became necessary to forward an account of your ideas to M.J.de Gray; to hear his objections, to reply to them, and to await his definitive response, which reached me but a short time ago; for M.J.is a sort of financial king, who takes no pains to be punctual in dealing with poor devils like ourselves.I, too, am careless in matters of business; I sometimes push my negligence even to disorder, and the metaphysical musings which continually occupy my mind, added to the amusements of Paris, render me the most incapable man in the world for conducting a negotiation with despatch.
"I have M.Jobard's decision; here it is: In his judgment, you are too learned and clever for his children; he fears that you could not accommodate your mind and character to the childish notions common to their age and station.In short, he is what the world calls a good father; that is, he wants to spoil his children, and, in order to do this easily, he thinks fit to retain his present instructor, who is not very learned, but who takes part in their games and joyous sports with wonderful facility, who points out the letters of the alphabet to the little girl, who takes the little boys to mass, and who, no less obliging than the worthy Abbe P.of our acquaintance, would readily dance for Madame's amusement.Such a profession would not suit you, you who have a free, proud, and manly soul: you are refused; let us dismiss the matter from our minds.Perhaps another time my solicitude will be less unfortunate.I can only ask your pardon for having thought of thus disposing of you almost without consulting you.I find my excuse in the motives which guided me; I had in view your well-being and advancement in the ways of this world.
"I see in your letter, my comrade, through its brilliant witticisms and beneath the frank and artless gayety with which you have sprinkled it, a tinge of sadness and despondency which pains me.You are unhappy, my friend: your present situation does not suit you; you cannot remain in it, it was not made for you, it is beneath you; you ought, by all means, to leave it, before its injurious influence begins to affect your faculties, and before you become settled, as they say, in the ways of your profession, were it possible that such a thing could ever happen, which I flatly deny.You are unhappy; you have not yet entered upon the path which Nature has marked out for you.But, faint-hearted soul, is that a cause for despondency? Ought you to feel discouraged? Struggle, morbleu, struggle persistently, and you will triumph.J.J.Rousseau groped about for forty years before his genius was revealed to him.You are not J.JRousseau; but listen: I know not whether I should have divined the author of "Emile" when he was twenty years of age, supposing that I had been his contemporary, and had enjoyed the honor of his acquaintance.But I have known you, I have loved you, I have divined your future, if I may venture to say so; for the first time in my life, I am going to risk a prophecy.Keep this letter, read it again fifteen or twenty years hence, perhaps twenty-five, and if at that time the prediction which I am about to make has not been fulfilled, burn it as a piece of folly out of charity and respect for my memory.This is my prediction: you will be, Proudhon, in spite of yourself, inevitably, by the fact of your destiny, a writer, an author; you will be a philosopher;you will be one of the lights of the century, and your name will occupy a place in the annals of the nineteenth century, like those of Gassendi, Descartes, Malebranche, and Bacon in the seventeenth, and those of Diderot, Montesquieu, Helvetius.
