I am in a very tight spot, since pawning has reached its Thule, and besides, the heaviest dunning is going on.

As regards my physical condition, nothing carbuncular has, fortunately, reappeared. I was, however, compelled to go to Allen on account of a liver complaint, since Gumpert is not here and this matter cannot be treated from a distance. I have almost a whole bottle of arsenic still standing, but have not taken any for several weeks, because my present mode of life does not suit it.

Have you also suffered under the Consolidated Bank? Dr Rode was here the day before yesterday and related with great glee that Dronke had incurred considerable losses as a result of the Barnett crash.

The war is here, then, if no miracle occurs. The Prussians will pay for this boastfulness, and in any event the idyll in Germany is over.

The Proudhon clique among the students in Paris (“Courrier Français”) preaches peace, declares war to be obsolete, nationalities to be nonsense, attacks Bismarck and Garibaldi, etc. As a polemic against chauvinism their doings are useful and explicable. But as Proudhon believers (my very good friends Lafargue and Longuet here also belong to them), who think that the whole of Europe must and will sit quietly on its behind until the gentlemen in France have abolished “la misère et l'ignorance”, under which latter they themselves labour in inverse proportion to the clamour they make with “science sociale”, they are grotesque. In their articles on the present agricultural crisis in France, their “knowledge” appears astonishing.

The Russians, who constantly play the old game of playing off the European donkeys against each other and of being now partners with A, now with B, have unquestionably pushed on the Austrians in recent times, 1) because the Prussians have not yet made the proper concession concerning Oldenburg, 2) in order to tie the hands of the Austrians in Galicia, and 3) surely also because Lord Alexander II, like Alexander I (towards the end of his time), is in such a conservatively morose mood on account of the assassination attempt that his gentlemen diplomats must have at least “conservative” pretexts — and an alliance with Austria is conservative. When the opportune moment comes, they show the reverse side of the coin.

The official tone of the “blood and iron” Prussians testifies to great fearfulness. They now even compliment the French Revolution of 1789! They complain of Austrian irritability! The best thing that turned up in the lousy parliamentary debate here was the catalogue of sins that D'Israeli held up to the unfortunate Clarendon.

Salut. Yours,
KM

The Italian enthusiasm will probably receive a cold shower. Even the melodramatic, which, moreover, corresponds to the national character, would be bearable if there were not, entirely in the background, the hope placed in Badinguet. I cannot forget my Itzig. If he were still alive now, what a scandal he would make!