I had always laughed at these paradoxes; they had no more doctrinal value in my eyes than the thousand other freaks so common to this celebrated critic. A short time since, an obscure journal pretended that Proudhon, in private conversations, had drawn up a formula of an entire system based on masculine omnipotence, and published this system in its columns. One of two things is certain, said I to myself; either the journalist speaks falsely, or he tells the truth; if he speaks falsely, his evident aim is to destroy Proudhon in the confidence of the friends of progress, and to make him lose his lawful share of influence, in which case, he must be warned of it; if he tells the truth, Proudhon must still be warned of the fact, since it is impossible that, being the father of _several daughters_, paternal feeling should not have set him on the road to reason. At all events, I must know about it. I wrote to Proudhon, who, the next day, returned me an answer which I transcribe _verbatim_: "MADAM: "I know nothing of the article published by M. Charles Robin in the _Telegraphe_ of yesterday. In order to inform myself with regard to this paraphrase, as you entitle the article of M. Robin, I examined my first "Memoir on Property," page 265, Garnier edition, (I have no other,) and found no note there. I examined the same page in my other pamphlet, and discovered no note anywhere. It is therefore impossible for me to reply to your first question. "I do not exactly know what you call _my opinions_ on woman, marriage and the family; for I believe I have given no one a right to speak of my opinions on these subjects, any more than on that of property. "I have written economical and social criticisms; in making these criticisms (I take the word in its highest signification), I may have indeed expressed judgments to a greater or less degree relative, concerning a truth. I have no where that I know of, framed a dogma, a theory, a collection of principles; in a word, a system. All that I can tell you is, in the first place, as far as concerns myself, that my opinions have been formed progressively and in an unvarying direction; that, at the time at which I write, I have not deviated from this direction; and that, with this reserve, my existing opinions accord perfectly with what they were seventeen years ago when I published my first memoirs.