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A SERIES OF INSURRECTIONS 47
importunate and exacting demands. An account is given
by Guillaume of what I believe is the last meeting between
Bakounin and certain of his old friends in September,
1874. Ross, Cafiero, Spichiger, and Guillaume met
Bakounin in a hotel at Neuchatel. Guillaume, it appears,
was cold and unfeeling; Cafiero and Ross said nothing,
while Spichiger wept silently in a corner. "The explicit
declaration made by me
"
says Guillaume, "took
. . .
away from Bakounin at the very beginning all hope of a
change in our estimation of him. It was also a question
of money in this last interview. We offered to assure to
our old friend a monthly pension of 300 francs, expressing
the hope that he would continue to write, but he refused
to accept anything. As a set-off, he asked Cafiero
to loan him 3,000 francs (no longer 5,000),
. . .
and Cafiero replied that he would do it.
Then we separated
sadly." (29)
On the first of July, 1876, Bakounin, after a brief illness,
died at Bern at the house of his old friend, Dr.
Vogt. The press of Europe printed various comments
upon his life and work. The anarchists wrote their eulogies,
while the socialists generally deplored the ruinous
and disrupting tactics that Bakounin had employed in the
International Working Men's Association. This story
will be told later, but it is well to mention here that
since 1869 an unbridgeable chasm had opened itself between
the anarchists and the socialists. When they
first
came together in the International there was no clear
distinction between them, but, after Bakounin was expelled
from that organization in 1872, at The Hague, his
followers frankly called themselves anarchists, while the
followers of Marx called themselves socialists.
In principles
and tactics they were poles apart,
and the bitterness
between them was at fever heat. The anarchists