In the first instance I must beg you to excuse my prolonged 
silence. I should have answered your letter long ago if I had not 
been quite overburdened with work, so much so that my health 
broke down, and my doctor found it necessary to banish me for a 
few months to this sea-bathing place, with the strict injunction to 
do nothing. 

I shall comply with your wish after my return to London when a 
favorable occasion occurs for rushing into print. 

I have sent a declaration to The New York Herald? in which I 
decline all and every responsibility for the trash and _ positive 
falsehoods with which its correspondent burdens me.” I do not 
know whether the Herald has printed it. 

The number of the Communal refugees arriving in London is 
on the increase, while our means of supporting them is daily on 
the decrease, so that many find themselves in a very deplorable 
state. We shall make an appeal for assistance to the Americans.** 

To give you an inkling of the state of things that under the 
République Thiers prevails in France, I will tell you what has 
happened to my own daughters. 

My second daughter, Laura, is married to Monsieur Lafargue, a 
medical man. They left Paris a few days before the commence- 
ment of the first siege for Bordeaux, where Lafargue’s father‘ 
lived. The latter, having fallen very ul, wanted to see his son, who 

attended him, indeed was at his sick bed until the time of his 
death. Lafargue and my daughter then continued to stay at 
Bordeaux, where the former possesses a house. During the time of 
the Commune, Lafargue acted as Secretary to the Bordeaux 
branches of the International, and was also sent as a delegate to 
Paris, where he stayed six days to make himself acquainted with 
the state of things there. During all the time he was not molested 
by the Bordeaux police. Toward the middle of May my two 
unmarried daughters set out for Bordeaux, and thence together 
with the family Lafargue to Bagnéres de Luchon, in the Pyrenees, 
near the Spanish frontier.... There the eldest daughter, who had 
suffered from a severe attack of pleurisy, took the mineral waters 
and underwent regular medical treatment. Lafargue and his wife 
had to attend to a dying baby, and my youngest daughter amused 
herself as much in the charming environs of Luchon as the family 
afflictions permitted. Luchon is a place of resort for patients and 
for the beau monde, and above all places the least fitted for 
political intrigue. My daughter Madame Lafargue had, moreover, 
the misfortune to lose her child, and shortly after its burial—in 
the second week of August—who should appear at the dwelling 
place? The illustrious Kératry, well known by the infamies he 
committed during the Mexican war, and the equivocal part he 
played during the Franco-Prussian war, first as Prefect of Police at 
Paris, and later as a soi-disant? General in Brittany, and now 
Prefect of the Haute-Garonne, and M. Delpech, Procureur Gener- 
al of Toulouse—both these worthies being accompanied by 
gendarmes. 

Lafargue had received a hint the evening before, and had 
crossed the Spanish frontier, having provided himself with a 
Spanish passport at Bordeaux. 

Although the son of French parents, he was born in Cuba, and 
is therefore a Spaniard. A domiciliary visit was made at the 
dwelling place of my daughters, and they themselves were 
subjected to a severe cross examination by the two mighty 
representatives of the République Thiers. They were charged with 
carrying on an insurrectional correspondence. That correspon- 
dence consisted simply in letters to their mother, the contents of 
which were of course not flattering to the French Government, 
and in copies of some London newspapers! For about a week their 
house was watched by gendarmes. They had to promise to leave 

France, where their presence was too dangerous, as soon as they 
could make the preparations necessary for their departure, and in 
the mean time they were to consider themselves as people placed 
under the haute surveillance? of the police. Kératry and Delpech 
had flattered themselves with the hope of finding them unpro- 
vided with passports, but fortunately they were possessed of 
regular English passports. Otherwise they would have had to share 
the infamous treatment of the sister of Delescluze and other 
French ladies as innocent as themselves. They have not yet 
returned, and are probably waiting for news from Lafargue. 

Meanwhile the Paris papers told the most incredible lies; the 
Gaulois, for instance, transforming my three daughters into three 
brothers of mine, well known and dangerous agents of the 
International Propaganda, though I have no brothers. At the 
same time that La France, a Paris organ of Thiers, gave a most 
varnished tale of the events at Luchon, and asserted that Monsieur 
Lafargue might quietly return to France without incurring any 
danger,° the French Government requested the Spanish Govern- 
ment to arrest Lafargue as a member of the Paris Commune! to 
which he had never belonged, and to which, as a resident of 
Bordeaux, he could not belong. Lafargue was in fact arrested, and 
under the escort of gendarmes marched to Barbastro, where he 
had to take his night quarters in the town prison, thence to 
Huesca, whence the Governor, on telegraphic order from the 
Spanish Minister of the Interior,’ had to forward him to Madrid. 
According to The Daily News of the 24th August, he has at last 
been set free.* 

The whole proceedings at Luchon and in the papers’ were 
nothing but shabby attempts of Mr. Thiers & Co. to revenge 
themselves upon me as the author of the address of the General 
Council of the International on the Civil War.’ Between their 
revenge and my daughters stood the English passport, and Mr. 
Thiers is as cowardly in his relations to foreign powers as he is 
unscrupulous in regard to his disarmed countrymen. 

© “Luchon, 8 aott 1871”, La France, No. 213, August 12, 1871.— Ed. 

As to Cluseret, I do not think that he was a traitor, but certainly 
he undertook to play a part for which he lacked the mettle, and 
thus he did great harm to the Commune. I know nothing as to his 
whereabouts. And now addio! 

Your old friend, 

Karl Marx