people.

Lagrange has a grey moustache, a grey beard and long grey hair. He is
overflowing with soured generosity, charitable violence and a sort of
chivalrous demagogy; there is a love in his heart with which he stirs
up hatred; he is tall, thin, young looking at a distance, old when seen
nearer, wrinkled, bewildered, hoarse, flurried, wan, has a wild look in
his eyes and gesticulates; he is the Don Quixote of the Mountain. He,
also, tilts at windmills; that is to say, at credit, order, peace,
commerce, industry,--all the machinery that turns out bread. With this,
a lack of ideas; continual jumps from justice to insanity and from
cordiality to threats. He proclaims, acclaims, reclaims and declaims.
He is one of those men who are never taken seriously, but who sometimes
have to be taken tragically.

PRUDHON.

Prudhon was born in 1803. He has thin fair hair that is ruffled and
ill-combed, with a curl on his fine high brow. He wears spectacles. His
gaze is at once troubled, penetrating and steady. There is something
of the house-dog in his almost flat nose and of the monkey in his
chin-beard. His mouth, the nether lip of which is thick, has an habitual
expression of ill-humour. He has a Franc-Comtois accent, he utters the
syllables in the middle of words rapidly and drawls the final syllables;
he puts a circumflex accent on every "a," and like Charles Nodier,
pronounces: "_honorable, remarquable_." He speaks badly and writes well.
In the tribune his gesture consists of little feverish pats upon his
manuscript with the palm of his hand. Sometimes he becomes irritated,
and froths; but it is cold slaver. The principal characteristic of his
countenance and physiognomy is mingled embarrassment and assurance.

I write this while he is in the tribune.

Anthony Thouret met Prudhon.

"Things are going badly," said Prudhon.

"To what cause do you attribute our embarrassments?" queried Anthony
Thouret.

"The Socialists are at the bottom of the trouble, of course.

"What! the Socialists? But are you not a Socialist yourself?"

"I a Socialist! Well, I never!" ejaculated Prudhon.

"Well, what in the name of goodness, are you, then?"

"I am a financier."

BLANQUI.

Blanqui got so that he no longer wore a shirt. For twelve years he had
worn the same clothes--his prison clothes--rags, which he displayed
with sombre pride at his club. He renewed only his boots and his gloves,
which were always blac