nd devotees to past
revolutions, ... others mere bawlers, who by dint of repeating year
after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the
Government of the day have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists
of the first water. After the 18th of March some such men turned up, and
in some cases contrived to play preeminent parts. As far as their power
went, they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men
of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous
revolution. They are an unavoidable evil; with time they are shaken off;
but time was not allowed to the Commune."[17]

The despair of Bakounin over the miserable ending of his great plans for
the salvation of France had, of course, disappeared long before the
revolution broke out in Spain, and he easily persuaded himself that his
presence there was absolutely necessary to insure its success. "I have
always felt and thought," he wrote in the _Memoire justificatif_, "that
the most desirable end for me would be to fall in the midst of a great
revolutionary storm."[18] Consequently, in the summer of the year 1873,
when the uprising gave promise of victory to the insurgents, Bakounin
decided that he must go and, to do so, that he must have money. Bakounin
then wrote to his wealthy young disciple, Cafiero, in a symbolic
language which they had worked out between them, declaring his intention
of going to Spain and asking him to furnish the necessary money for his
expenses. As usual, Bakounin became melodramatic in his effort to work
upon the impressionable Cafiero, and, as he put it afterward in the
_Memoire justificatif_, "I added a prayer that he would become the
protector of my wife and my children, in case I should fall in
Spain."[19] Cafiero, who at this time worshiped Bakounin, pleaded with
him not to risk his precious life in Spain. He promised to do everything
possible for his family in case he persisted in going, but he sent no
money, whether because he did not have it or because he did not wish
Bakounin to go is not clear. Bakounin now wrote to Guillaume that he was
greatly disappointed not to be able to take part in the Spanish
revolution, but that it was impossible for him to do so without money.
Guillaume admits that he was not convinced of the absolute necessity of
Bakounin's presence in Spain, but, nevertheless, since he desired to go
there, Guillaume offered to secure for him fifteen hundred francs to
make the