MARX TO ENGELS” 

Deedee [London,] 14 February 1861 

You must really forgive me for not having answered your very 
kind letter? before now. In the meantime, you will have received a 
communication from philistine Freiligrath. 

I have had, and still have, an enormous amount of running 
about to do. For I intend to go to Holland so as to put my affairs 
over here in order, otherwise they will get out of hand. There are 
two things I require for the purpose, a passport and money, both 
of which I shall manage to get hold of here d’uie maniére ou d’une 
autre (I may have to go as far as Aachen.) 

I haven’t written to Lassalle yet. No doubt something in the 
nature of a weekly“ would be best, but, then again, what a risk we 
should run, given the indiscretion of our friend, if he were there 
on the spot as editor-in-chief, and thus in a position to get us all 
into hot water! He would, of course, immediately stress that the 
thing was a party organ, so that we, too, should be held 
responsible for every imbecility and our position in Germany would 
be ruined before we had so much as regained it. This requires the 
most careful consideration. 

a Engels is referring to a plot of land by the river Sieg. - > See this volume, 
pp. 256-58. - © in one way or another - 4 See this volume, pp. 252, 257. 

The conspiration de silence in the German press is having a 
seriously adverse effect on sales of Herr Vogt. After a good start, 
they have accordingly come to a standstill. The Allgemeine Zeitung 
seems pretty well determined not to carry Bucher’s review either. 
At any rate, we shall know one way or another in the next few 
days, for, if it intends to publish it at all, it can’t go on putting it 
off much longer. Kolatschek is a certainty. 

My wife recommends that you read Hans Ibeles by Johanna 
Mockel,* in which Willich figures as Wildemann, etc., Mrs von 
Briiningk as Platonina, and that blackguard Kinkel as Don Juan. I 
myself know nothing about the rubbish save for what my wife has 
told me. She says that the book provides irrefutable evidence that 
Johanna Mockel threw herself out of the window because she had 
been crossed in love. (By THE sy, my wife’s complexion is still far 
from smooth and probably won’t be for some time to come.) At 
any rate, it’s commendable in Parson Kinkel*’' that he should 
make money out of the late Mockel’s conressions by selling them to 
Cotta, and then consume it with Minna Werner, by whom he already 
has a child. Parsons are the cleverest of men. However, Johanna 
Mockel was an acrimonious body and her breath, for all her love of 
music, was acrid, too. 

Have had the Nazione” Very good. Ditto the Volunteer Journal. 
But not your pamphlet.*” 

Vogt will never forgive Vincke for having put him in the shade 
so completely. Incidentally, those Prussian swine are making fools 
of themselves rn Every respect. Firstly, the blackguards ask Bonaparte 
to continue his intervention at Gaeta”; secondly, the rascals have 
joined Bonaparte and Russia in declaring themselves in favour of 
continued French intervention in Syria.“ Austria opposes this, 
and, of course, so does Palmerston, ror appearance’S SAKE. And the 
way they’re carrying on at home! The rotten bunch is bound to 
come a cropper. 

Wilhelm Liebknecht has been almost completely laid off by his 
American newspapers as well. One of the papers‘ for which he 
wrote was sackep in New Orleans. 

Salut. Your 
K. M.