MARX TO ENGELS!” 

[London,] 14 December 1868 

Dear FRep, 

On Saturday evening* Ténot (Paris and Provinces)” and the 
proceedings of the Baudin trial?” arrived. I am sending you 
Ténot (Paris) and Baudin today. The Ténot (Provinces) you will 
receive in a few days. You can bring the whole lot back yourself, 
for nobody in the house except me has yet read the things. 

In the Ténot (Paris) I find little new, except a few details—I 
have not yet read the Provinces. The enormous sensation created 
by the book in Paris, and in France as a whole, proves a very 
interesting Fact, namely that the generation that has grown up 
under Badinguet‘* knew nothing at all about the history of the 
regime under which it is living. Now the fellows are rubbing their 
eyes and are quite thunderstruck. If one may parva componere 
magnis,’ have we not had precisely the same experience in our 
own way? In Germany the story is spreading, as a remarkable 
novelty, that Lassalle was only one of our satellites, and that he did 
not discover the ‘class struggle’. 

I can discover nothing special in the speech by Gambetta,° who is 
now being lionised in France. His manner reminds me strikingly 
of Michel de Bourges. This Michel also made his name through a 
political trial. A few months before the February revolution he 
declared that he had abandoned his belief in ‘democracy’, since it 
always turned into ‘demagogy’. Of course, this did not prevent 
him from shining as a républicain de la veille' after February, and 
rendering excellent service to Bonaparte, nolens or  volens, 
particularly in the question of quaestors.”** He was also mors or LESss 
in contact with the republican ‘Plon-Plon’. 

I was really oe ee to ia again in rutt the deliberations of 
the ‘républicains modérés’, i. e., those seated in the législative, in the 
10th Arrondissement- Mairie. 25 T believe no similar tragicomedy 

a 12 December - » See this volume, p. 178. - © Napoleon III (Badinguet is the name 
of the stone-mason in whose clothes he escaped from prison in 1846). - 4 compare 
small and great - ¢ L. Gambetta, ‘Plaidorie de M. Gambetta, avocat de M. Delescluze. 
Audience du 14 novembre 1868’. In: Affaire de la souscription Baudin, 3 ed., Paris, 
1868. - £ time-honoured republican - 8 willy-nilly 

can be found anywhere in world history, at least not carried out in 
this pure form. The Frankfurt-Stuttgart Parliament is nothing 
in comparison. The French alone understand how to put on a 
show, whether it be a convention or a rump parliament of 
thorough scoundrels. 

As for the cotton, I have the import and export lists for 1861, 
etc., in the Returns of the Board of Trade.* The only racr of 
importance to me was—and this is certainly unprecedented —that 
for 3 years nothing was manufactured for the home market (1 
mean from the freshly-tmported raw materials during those 3 years, 
or those only intended to make up stock). 

Asher, the booksellers here (a branch of the Berlin one, Unter 
den Linden) have written to me that they need a few copies of 
Herr Vogt in Berlin.” That infernal Wilhelm,‘ as you know, never 
answered a very pressing letter I sent him months ago,” except to 
say that he had frittered away the 300 copies turned over to him, 
but that a few still existed in Berlin. I shall give him another kick 
today.** 

Tussychen is enraptured at the prospect of having you here 
with us, and so is the whole FAMILY. Tussy IS A FANATICAL PARTISAN OF YOURS, 
Mrs Lizzie, AND THE ‘CONVICTED’ NATION.? But you must write when. 

Salut. 
Your 

K. M. 
In Balzac’s Le Curé de Village there is this passage: 

‘Si le produit industriel n’était pas le double en valeur de son prix de revient en 
argent, le commerce n’existerait pas.’ 

Qu’en dis-tu?* 

Since Nincompoop‘ discovered Serno, he does not treat him so 
severely. He is only astonished that Serno turned to me instead of to 
him.