London, 19 October 1867 

Dear Frep, 

As regards Borkheim, I told him: what Engels wrote is final and 
is not subject to ‘negotiation’. He (today he left for Bordeaux) let 
himself be ruled by me to the extent of paying out £40 to me and 
promising To FIND THE rest by 10 November without further 
prevarication if you were unable, etc. But as a businessman and a 
Jew he had to make just one more attempt! 

Incidentally, Borkheim has just had a hugely gratifying experi- 
ence. Schabelitz put an exceedingly bombastic notice of Bor- 
kheim’s ‘Perlé in the Buchhändlerbörsenblatt< in which Borkheim is 
featured as Peter the Hermit vis-a-vis Russia. Writ! The Moscow 
Newspaper has printed this (in translation) as a curiosity, and he 
thus had the pleasure of seeing himself and his name in print in 
Russian! He showed me a copy and interpreted it for me. 

a Abraham Jacobi - > S. Borkheim, Ma perle devant le congrés de Genéve. - © Bérsenblatt 
für den Deutschen Buchhandel, No. 230, 3 October 1867. - 4 Mocxoscxia ssdomocmu, 
No. 210, 28 September 1867. 

Lafargue was put to a deal of trouble translating Borkheim’s 
French at least passably into French.* I had to give him some 
assistance, of course, especially for the quotations from Kant, 
Fichte and Hegel, which Borkheim probably did not quite 
understand even in German. But he has these gentlemen in his 
library. 

I am glad the matter is thus settled. In recent weeks I have 
found it perfectly impossible to write for more than maybe 2 
hours. Apart from the incursions from without, there are all the 
aggravations of home life, which I always find especially nerve- 
racking. I have been suffering from insomnia again and had the 
pleasure of seeing 2 small carbuncles blossom near the membrum. 
Fortunately, they have faded away. My sickness always originates 
in the mind. While on the subject of the membrum, may I 
commend the following lines to you for Moore from the French 
satirist of the 16th century, Mathurin Régnier. Well-read though I 
am in this field, I do not think that chaude pisse has ever been 
more poetically described: 

Mon cas, qui se leve et se hausse, 
Bave d’une estrange facon; 

Belle, vous fournites la sausse, 
Lors que je fournis le poisson. 

Las! si ce membre eut l’arrogance 
De fouiller trop les lieux sacrés, 
Qu’on lui pardonne son offence, 
Car il pleure assez ses péchés.> 

And this by the same poet is not bad either: 

Fluxion D’Amour 

L’amour est une affection 
Qui, par les yeux, dans le cceur entre, 

a See this volume, pp. 435-36. 

b My will, which riseth up in pride, 
Doth spout most curiously; 
The sauce, my love, thou didst provide, 
The fish it was from me. 

Ah, did that member overween 
To delve the sacred place? 

Pray pardon him his grievous sin, 
He weepeth his disgrace. 

M. Régnier, Stances. 

Et, par la forme de fluxion, 
S’écoule par le bas du ventre.? 

Finally: 
Lizette tuée par Régnier 

Lizette, a qui l’on faisait tort, 

Vint a Régnier tout éplorée, 

Je te pry: Donne-moi Ia mort, 

Que jai tant de fois désirée! 

Lui, ne la refusant en rien, 

Tire son... vous m’entendez bien; 

Et dedans le ventre la frappe. 

Elle, voulant finir ses jours, 

Lui dit: Mon cceur, pousse toujours, 
De crainte que je n’en réchappe. 
Régnier, las de la servir, 

Craignant une seconde plainte, 

Lui dit: Hastez-vous de mourir, 

Car mon poignard n’a plus de pointe.» 

2 Freiligrath snippets enclosed.” 
Enclosed 2 Courrier frangais and 1 Liberté. There is no need for 
you to send back these journals. But do keep them! I have not 

a Love's Fluxion 

Our love is an affection 

That by our eyes attains the heart, 
Then takes the form of fluxion 
And issues through the nether part. 

M. Régnier, Epigrammes, X. 

b Lizette slain by Régnier 

Lizette, beset by slander’s breath, 

To Régnier came with tearful eyes: 
My friend, I pray thee, give me death, 
Therein my only yearning lies. 

He, ever eager to obey, 

Unsheaths his ... what more need I say? 
And at her belly lunges low. 

She, hoping that he her would kill, 
Tells him, my heart it yearneth still, 

I fear I shall my fate forego, 

But Régnier, weary of his pledge, 
Fearing a second suppliant cry, 

Tells her, oh haste thee now and die, 
For this my sword has lost his edge. 

M. Régnier, Epigrammes, XV. 

read the nonsense in the Courrier on the Art Militaire, but I did 
read Proudhon on the generatio aequivoca*! I suspect that l’un vaut 
autre. 

H. Meyer was here the day before yesterday en route for 
America. Perhaps he called on you, too. 

Let me have your recipes‘ for the German newspapers. I will 
have them copied out and find the most suitable placements. They 
will even find double emploi,’ at least in part, as Meyer was also 
asking for something of the kind for over there and will put them 
to good use. As soon as this has been done in Germany— and that 
is the most important thing, for success here depends largely on what 
happens there—you must write a critique for The Fortnightly 
Review” Beesly will get it in. This is a necessary prerequisite to 
CATCH A PUBLISHER IN Lonpon. The paper is secretly (so secretly that not 
a soul notices it) of Comteist persuasion, but wishes to provide an 
outlet for every point of view. If your critique arouses Mr Lewes’ 
(the Goethe man, and unfortunately semi-Comteist, too) interest in 
the book (Lewes is secretly also co-proprietor of the Review), it will 
be easy to find a publisher. And even without that, a publisher will 
in any case be easier to find then. The latest number contains a 
truly pitiful article by Thornton, in which he _ reproduces 
Ma Prussianism (in which the real Moncers do not believe) in the most 
commonplace and trivial form.‘ 

‘What our party lacks is money, as the enclosed letters from 
Eccarius and Becker once more painfully demonstrate.*’” But for 
this deficiency, we should always be, despite great and irreplace- 
able losses, today as in 1848, les plus forts! 

Regards to Mrs Lizzy. 

Your 
K. M.