Sir.—In your issue of this morning your Paris correspondent, 
amongst other inaccuracies concerning the family of my late 
friend Karl Marx, states that after the Commune the French 
Minister of Justice ordered the arrest of M. Paul Lafargue, 
recently elected deputy at Lille.* He then continues— 

“Madam Karl Marx is said at this time to have revealed the whereabouts of a 
depot of arms to the authorities, on condition that her son-in-law should not be 
molested. M. Lafargue then passed the Spanish frontier.” 

Mrs. Aveling, the daughter of Mrs. Marx, being for the moment 
absent from London, the duty of repelling the above-mentioned 
accusation against her mother devolves upon me. The facts are 
these: —M. Lafargue, while staying with his wife” and his two 
sisters-in-law* at Bagnéres-de-Luchon, was informed of his im- 
pending arrest by a friendly Republican police-officer. He escaped 
the same day into Spain, passing the Pyrenées on horseback.?” 
Mrs. Marx, who was then in London, therefore could not, even if 
she had been so minded, interfere on his behalf by betraying to 
the French Government anything whatever. The whole story of 
the pretended depot of arms is a mere fable, invented to blacken 
the memory of a woman whose noble and self-sacrificing nature 
was utterly incapable of a mean action. 

I am, Sir, your obedient servant. Frederick Engels 

122, Regent’s-park-road, N.W., Nov. 17. 

No. 9269, November 26, 1891 checked with the rough manu- 
script 

a “The Case of M. Lafargue”, The Daily Chronicle, No. 9261, November 17, 
1891.— Ed.