rs, the Mountain promised to be present at the banquet. The
night before, all seemed right, when General Cavaignac replaced Minister
Senart by Minister Dufaure-Vivien. The Mountain, questioning the
government, proposed a vote of confidence in the old minister, and,
tacitly, of want of confidence in the new. Proudhon abstained from
voting on this proposition. The Mountain declared that it would not
attend the banquet, if Proudhon was to be present. Five Montagnards,
Mathieu of Drome at their head, went to the temporary office of "Le
Peuple" to notify him of this. "Citizen Proudhon," said they to the
organizers in his presence, "in abstaining from voting to-day on
the proposition of the Mountain, has betrayed the Republican cause."
Proudhon, vehemently questioned, began his defence by recalling, on
the one hand, the treatment which he had received from the dismissed
minister; and, on the other, the impartial conduct displayed towards him
in 1840 by M. Vivien, the new minister. He then attacked the Mountain by
telling its delegates that it sought only a pretext, and that really, in
spite of its professions of Socialism in private conversation, whether
with him or with the organizers of the banquet, it had not the courage
to publicly declare itself Socialist.

On the following day, in his Toast to the Revolution, a toast which
was filled with allusions to the exciting scene of the night before,
Proudhon commenced his struggle against the Mountain. His duel with
Felix Pyat was one of the episodes of this struggle, which became less
bitter on Proudhon's side after the Mountain finally decided to publicly
proclaim the Democratic and Social Republic. The campaign for the
election of a President of the Republic had just begun. Proudhon made
a very sharp attack on the candidacy of Louis Bonaparte in a pamphlet
which is regarded as one of his literary chefs-d'oeuvre: the "Pamphlet
on the Presidency." An opponent of this institution, against which he
had voted in the Constituent Assembly, he at first decided to take no
part in the campaign. But soon seeing that he was thus increasing the
chances of Louis Bonaparte, and that if, as was not at all probable, the
latter should not obtain an absolute majority of the votes, the Assembly
would not fail to elect General Cavaignac, he espoused, for the sake of
form, the candidacy of Raspail, who was supported by his friends in
the Socialist Committee. Charles Delescluze, the editor-in-chief