[Paris,] 19 August 1846 
Cercle Valois, Palais Royal 

Dear Marx, 

Arrived here at last Saturday evening after a fatiguing journey 
and much tedium.” Immediately ran into Ewerbeck. The lad is 
very cheerful, completely tractable, more receptive than ever; in 
short I hope that—given a little patience—he and I will come to 
see pretty well eye to eye in all things. There are no longer any 
complaints about party strife—for the simple reason that he 
himself has been compelled to elbow out some of the Weitlingians 
here. Little has as yet transpired about what actually took place 
between him and Grün to create a breach between them; all we 

know is that Grün, by adopting now a fawning, now an arrogant, 
manner, was able to retain his more or less respectful affection. 
Ewerbeck has no illusions whatever about Hess, il n’a pas la 
moindre sympathie pour cet homme-la.* In any case he has long. 
nourished a private hate against him, going back to the time they 
lodged together. I duly reprimanded him about the 
Westphalians.’’ That oaf Weydemeyer had written Bernays a 
Westphalianly lachrymose letter in which those noble fellows 
Meyer and Rempel were portrayed as martyrs ina good cause, 
gladly sacrificing their all, but whom we had rejected with 
contempt, etc.; and those two gullible Teutons, Ewerbeck and 
Bernays, sit down together, bemoan our hardness of heart and 
contentiousness and take the lieutenant at his word. Such 
superstition can scarcely be credited. 

Grün has swindled the workers out of some 300 fr. on the 
pretext of having a pamphlet of 1'/2 sheets printed in Switzerland.” 
Now the money’s coming in, but the workers aren’t getting a 
penny of it. Now they’re beginning to dun him for it. Ewerbeck 
realises how foolish it was of him to introduce this fellow Grin 
among the artisans. He is now afraid to accuse Grün publicly 
before them because he believes him capable of giving everything 
away to the police. But what a gullible fellow this Ewerbeck is! The 
wily Grün had himself told Ewerbeck all about his. shabby 
tricks—but presenting them, of course, as undiluted heroic acts 
des Dévouements,© and Ewerbeck swallows every word hc says. Of 
the fellow’s earlier knaveries he knew only as much as the 
pEuNquENT himself had thought fit to tell him. Ewerbeck, by the 
way, has warned Proudhon against Grün. Grün is back here, living 
away over in Ménilmontant, and scribbling the most dreadful 
articles for the Trier’sche.’ Maurer has translated the relevant 
passages from Grün’s book“ for Cabet; you can imagine Cabet’s 
rage. He has lost all credit even with the National. 

I went to see Cabet. The old boy was extremely cordial, I 
listened to all his stuff, told him about God and the devil, etc. I 
shall go there more often. But we must not bother him with the 
correspondence. Firstly, he has enough to do and secondly, he’s 
too mistrustful. Id y verrait un piége' for making improper use of 
his name. 

a He has not the slightest sympathy for that man. - > K. Grün, Die preussischen 
Landtags-Abschiede. - © of sacrifice - 4 Trier’sche Zeitung-* K. Grün, Die soziale 
Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien. - He would see it as a trap. 

I have been leafing quickly through Feuerbach’s Das Wesen der 
Religion in Epigonen. Apart from a few happy insights, the thing’s 
entirely in the old style. At the beginning, where he confines 
himself purely to natural religion, he is compelled to remain on 
rather more empirical ground, but later on it’s all at sixes and 
sevens. Once again full of ‘essence’, ‘Man’, etc. I’ll read it properly 
and very soon send you excerpts from the principal passages if 
they are interesting, so that you'll still be able to use it for the 
Feuerbach.” Meanwhile two passages only“ The whole—some 60 
pages—opens with the following definition of nature as opposed 
to the human essence: 

‘The essence that is different from and independent of the human essence or 
Ged (!!), whose portrayal is the “Essence of Christianity” (1), the essence without 
human essence (2), human attributes (3), human individuality (4), ts in truth nothing 
other than—nature’ (p. 117). 

This is truly a masterpiece of tautology blared forth in tones of 
thunder. Not only that, but in this proposition he identifies the 
religious, imaginary phantom of nature wholly and entirely with 
real nature. Comme toujours.”—Again, a little further on: 

‘Religion is the acceptance and acknowledgement of that which I am (!) ...To 
elevate dependence on nature to consciousness, to picture it to oneself, to accept, 
acknowledge it, means to elevate oneself to religion’ (p. 118). 

Not long ago the minister, Dumon, was caught in his shirt-tails 
with the wife of a president. The Corsaire-Satan relates: ‘A lady 
who had petitioned Guizot said, “It is a pity that so excellent a 
man as Guizot est toujours si sévére et boutonné jusqu’au cou.” Says 
the wife of an employé of travaux publics,’ “On ne peut pas dire cela 
de M. Dumon, on trouve généralement qu’il est un peu trop déboutonné 
pour un ministre’.’* 

Quelques heures aprés, during which time I paid a fruitless visit 
to the Café Cardinal to oblige little Weill—little Weill is somewhat 
riled because he isn’t getting his fees of 1,000 or so francs from 
the Démocratie pacifique which appears to be embroiled in a kind 
of GREAT CRISIS AND STOPPING OF CASH Payments, and little Weill is too much 

@ Das Wesen der Religion is quoted below according to the collection Die Epigonen, Bd. 
1, Leipzig, 1846. (The end of the second quotation is paraphrased.) - » As always. - 
¢ is always so strict and buttoned up to the neck. (Here and below isa close rendering 
of items in the Corsaire-Satan of 16 and 17 August 1846.) -4 a public works 
official - © One cannot say as much of Mr Dumon, he is usually thought to be a little 
too much unbuttoned for a minister. - £ Some hours later. 

of a Jew to allow himself to be fobbed off with banknotes on the 
first phalanstery of the future. By the way, the Fourierist gents 
become daily more tedious. The Phalange is nothing but nonsense. 
The information contained in Fourier’s posthumous work is 
confined entirely to the mouvement aromal* and the mating of the 
planets which would appear to, take place plus ou moins> from 
behind. The mating of Saturn and Uranus engenders dung- 
beetles—which in any case the Fourierists themselves are—but the 
chief dung-beetle is the Irishman, Mr Hugh Doherty, who in fact 
isn’t even a dung-beetle but only a dung-grub, a dung-larva—the 
poor creature is floundering about for the tenth time (J0™ article) in 
the question religieuse© and still can’t discover how he can decently 
make his exrr. 

I haven’t yet seen Bernays. But according to Ewerbeck he isn’t 
getting along too badly and his worst complaint is boredom. The 
man is said to have grown very robust and healthy, his main 
activity, gardening, having apparently vanquished care so far as 
his human frame is concerned. He also, dit-on,’ holds the goats by 
the horns when his—? wife?—, who can only be thought of 
between two question marks, is milking them. The poor devil 
naturally feels il] at ease in these surroundings; save for Ewerbeck 
who goes there weekly, he doesn’t see a soul, potters about dressed 
in a peasant’s blouse, never leaves Sarcelles, which is the most 
wretched village on this earth and doesn’t even have a pub, in 
short, he’s bored to death. We must see if we can get him back to 
Paris; within a month he would be his old self again. Since 
Bornstein, in his capacity as informer, must not know of my 
presence here, we have first written to Bernays” suggesting a 
rendezvous in Montmorency or somewhere else in the neighbour- 
hood; afterwards we shall haul him off to Paris and spend a few 
francs on thoroughly cheering him up. That will make a different 
man of him. By the way, don’t let him suspect that I’ve written to 
you about him in this vein; in his high-flown. romantic mood, the 
good lad might feel it to be a moral injury. 

The best of it is that in the house at Sarcelles there are 2 
women, 2 men, several children, one of them dubious, and despite 
all this on n’y tire pas un coup’ They don’t even practise pederasty. 
C’est un roman allemand! 

a aromatic movement - > more or Jess - © H. Doherty, ‘La question religieuse’, La 
Phalange, T. IV, 1846. - 4 it is said - ¢ not a thing happens there - f It’s a German 
novel.