AT LE PERREUX 

Bellevue Hotel, Folkestone, 27 August 1890 

My dear Lafargue, 

Yes, we’re at the srasipz and what’s more, until your letter of the 
4th inst. reached me, no one had suggested my going to Le Per- 
reux, which, by the way, I should have done with much pleasure had 
it not been for the perfectly good reasons which I mentioned to 
Laura and which she evidently found acceptable at the time. We 
have been here for the past fortnight in a small pustic Houser; the land- 
lady, a most handsome woman, looks after us very well, but the place 
is a long way from the sea and not First ctass. We have our fourth 
bed in the parlour. 

As I am somewhat uncertain about my balance at the bank, being 
unable to compare my books, I can only send you a cheque for fen 
pounds, which I enclose. 

There has been a students’ revolt in the German party.'? During 
2 or 3 years a crowd of students, literati and other young déclassé 
bourgeois invaded the party, arriving just in time to take most of the 
editorial posts in the new papers that were then proliferating. In their 
usual fashion they regarded their bourgeois universities as socialist 
Saint-Cyrs ?! entitling them to enter the party in the rank of officer, if 

* See this volume, p. 5. 

not of general. These gentry all dabble in Marxism, albeit of the kind 
you were acquainted with in France ten years ago and of which Marx 
said: ‘All I know is that I’m not a Marxist.’ And he would doubtless 
say of these gentry what Heine said of his imitators: ‘I sowed dragons 
and I reaped fleas.’ 

These worthies, whose impotence is equalled only by their arro- 
gance, found support in the new recruits to the party in Berlin—a 
peculiar Berlinism, combining impudence, cowardice, rodomontade 
and Girt or THE GAB, would seem to have temporarily come to the sur- 
face. The young university gents now had a chorus. 

They attacked the deputies’ for no reason at all and no one could 
explain this sudden recrudescence. The truth is that the deputies, or 
most of them, didn’t take sufficient notice of the little wretches. Admit- 
tedly Liebknecht conducted the polemic on behalf of the deputies and 
the Central Committee with a rare lack of finesse. But then along 
came Bebel, their main target, who, at two meetings in Dresden and 
Magdeburg, proceeded to demolish two of their newspapers.” The 
Berlin meeting was guarded by the police who surreptitiously egged 
on the opposition or else got others to do so.?? But it’s all over never- 
theless and the congress '? is unlikely to have to concern itself further 
with the matter. This little stunt has done us good inasmuch as it has 
demonstrated the impossibility of allotting a Leapers’ role to the Berli- 
ners. All very well, perhaps, if they’d been Parisians— but we have 
had enough and more of your Parisians. 

The revelations about Boulanger in Figaro ?* must be astounding. 
Could you let me have them? It is sad for the 247,000 or, rather 
274,000 nincompoops, who in January 1889 allowed themselves to be 
taken in by that bogus panjandrum.?* 

In Kovalevsky’s book “ there is an important bit in which he assigns 
a place between the matriarchate and the mark (or mir“) community 
to the patriarchal family group of the kind that existed in France 
(Franche-Comté and Nivernais) up till 1789 and still exists today 
amongst the Serbs and Bulgars under the name of Zddruga. He tells 
me that in Russia this is the generally accepted view. If the thing were 
to be confirmed, it would clear up a number of difficulties in Tacitus 
et al., while at the same time raising others. The chief fault of Kova- 

* of the Social-Democratic group in the German Reichstag - Séchsesche Arbeiter-Zeitung 
and Volksstimme-° M. Kovalevsky, Tableau des origines et de Vévolution de la famil- 
le et de la propriété.-“ rural community in Russia (‘mips’) 

levsky’s book lies in the illusion of legality. I shall be discussing this 
in the new edition of my book.* Another fault (not uncommon 
amongst Russians who dabble in science) is an exaggerated faith in 
recognised authorities. 

Nim and Pumps send their love. 

Give Laura and Mémé a kiss from me. 

Yours ever, 

F.E.