[Paris,] Tuesday, 9 March [1847] 

Dear Marx, 

The wee pamphlet enclosed was delivered to me this morning 
by Junge; Ewerbeck had brought it to them a few days ago. 
Having looked at the thing, I declared it to be by Moses‘ and 
explained this to Junge, point by point. This evening I saw 
Ewerbeck, who confessed that he had brought it to them and, 
after I had thoroughly demolished the thing, came out with the 
information that he himself, Ewerbeck, was the author of the 

2 Probably Georg Weerth or Joseph Weydemeyer - > The remainder of the letter 
is missing, save for the next sentences, which are written in the margin. After the 
words ‘with me’ Marx added ‘see above’. - © Hess 

pretty concoction. He wrote it, he maintains, during the months 
that followed my. arrival here, inspired by the first rapture into 
which he had been thrown by the novelties I communicated. 
That’s how these lads are. While mocking Hess for decking 
himself out in borrowed plumes that didn’t suit him, and 
forbidding the Straubingers '*° to convey what I had told them to 
Grin lest he purloin it, he sits him down and—with the best 
intentions in the world, as always—conducts himself no whit 
better. Moses and Grün could not have more thoroughly bungled 
matters than this homespun clap-doctor. I, of course, first made 
fun of him a little and ended up by forbidding him ever to give 
vent to such stuff again. But it’s in these people’s bones. Last week 
I sat down and, partly out of foolishness, partly because I 
absolutely had to have some money, wrote for anonymous 
publication a letter, pullulating with smutty jokes, in which I 
expressed gratitude to Lola Montez.'*’ On Saturday I read him 
some bits out of it, and this evening he tells me, with his. 
customary bonhomie, that this inspired him to produce something 
similar and that he did so the very next day on the same subject, 
handing it in to Maurer for his anonymous periodical* (it really 
does appear quite sub rosa and only for the benefit of the editors, 
being censored by Madame Maurer, who has already blue- 
pencilled a poem by Heine). He was, he said, telling me about this 
in good time to save his honour and avoid committing a 
plagiarism! This fresh masterpiece by this passionately keen 
author will, of course, simply be my joke translated into a 
solemnly effusive style. This most recent exercise of the short gut, 
though of no significance, shows how extremely urgent it is that 
either your book or our manuscripts” should appear as soon as 
possible. The fellows are all worried by the thought that such 
splendid ideas should remain so long concealed from the people, 
and can think up no better way of getting this load off their minds 
than by voiding as much of it as they think they have passablement‘ 
digested. So don’t let the Bremen man‘ slip through your fingers. 
If he doesn’t reply, write again and accept a minimum, if needs 
must. Each month they lie idle these manuscripts lose 5-10 fr. per 
sheet in Exchangeable value. A few months from now, with la diéte 
prussienne' en discussion, la querelle bien entamée a Berlin’ Bauer 

a [H. Ewerbeck,] ‘Hier Baiern!—Hier Andalusia!’, Die Pariser Horen, April 1847. - 
b K. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy and Marx and Engels’ The German 
Ideology. - © tolerably well - 4 Kuhtmann - ¢ the Prussian Diet in debate, the dispute 
well under way in Berlin 

and Stirner will not fetch more than 10 fr. per sheet. With such a 
topical work one gradually gets to the stage where the high fee 
demanded as a writer’s point d’honneur has to be completely set 
aside. 

I spent about a week with Bernays in Sarcelles. He too does 
stupid things. Writes for the Berliner Zeitungs-Halle and is happy 
as a sandboy that his soidisant* communist anti-bourgeois expecto- 
rations appear in it. The editors and censors naturally allow 
anything purely anti-bourgeois to stand, but delete the few 
references that might also reflect unpleasantly on themselves. 
Fulminates about juries, ‘bourgeois freedom of the press’, the 
representation system, etc. I explain to him that this means 
literally working pour le roi de Prusse,” and indirectly, against our 
party—usual warm-hearted outpourings, impossibility of effecting 
anything; I point out that the Zeitungs-Halle is in the pay of the 
government, obstinate denials, references to symptoms which, in 
the eyes of everyone save the sensitive inhabitants of Sarcelles, 
precisely bear out my contention. Result: Inability of warm heart, 
ingenuous enthusiasm, to write contrary to its convictions, to 
comprehend any policy that spares those who hitherto were the 
objects of its mortal hatred. ‘Ain’t in me nature!’ the inevitable 
ultima ratio. 1 have read x of these articles dated from Paris; they 
are on ne peut plus’ in the interests of the government and in the 
style of true socialism. I feel inclined to give up Bernays and to 
meddle no more in the high-minded and repellent family woes in 
which he plays the eros des dévouements,” of boundless devotion. Il 
faut avoir vu cela’ The stench is like five thousand unaired 
featherbeds, multiplied by the release therein of innumerable 
farts—the result of Austrian vegetable cookery. And though the 
fellow should ten times. tear himself away from the riff-raff and 
come to Paris, he will return to them as often. You can imagine 
the kind of moralising humbug all this puts into his head. The 
mode composée family in which he lives is turning him into a 
perfect narrow-minded philistine. He'll never get me to come to 
his boutique’ again, nor is he likely to feel any urgent desire to see 
so unfeeling an individual as myself. 

You will very soon be receiving the pamphlet on the Constitu- 
tion.' I shall write it on separate sheets, so that you can insert and 

4 self-styled - > for the King of Prussia, i. e. for nothing - © last argument - 4 as 
much as they could be - € hero of devotion - f It has to be seen. - 8 complex kind 
of - } place (literally: shop) -' F. Engels, The Constitutional Question in Germany. 

discard.'*? If there’s any prospect of Vogler paying something, ask 
him if he will take the Lola Montez joke—approx. 1’/s-2 sheets, 
but you needn’t tell him the thing originated with me. Let me 
know by return, for otherwise I shall try in Belle-Vue. You'll have 
seen from the Débats or the Constitutionnel that, as a result of 
complaints made by Wirttemberg, the Great Council has made it 
impossible for the scoundrelly Schlapfer in Herisau to go on 
publishing revolutionary stuff; he himself has confirmed this in 
letters to us and has asked that nothing further be sent to him. All 
the more reason, therefore, to maintain contact with the man in 
Bremen. If nothing at all comes of it with him, there remains only 
the publishers and booksellers in Belle-Vue near Constance. Au 
reste,’ should the placing of our manuscripts clash with the placing 
of your book, then, for heaven’s sake, chuck the manuscripts into 
a corner, for it’s far more important that your book should 
appear. We’re neither of us likely to make much out of our work 
in that quarter. 

In yesterday’s (Monday’s) Kolner Zeitung you may have seen a 
smug article on the scandalous affair of Martin du Nord.’ That 
article was by Bernays—from time to time he takes Bérnstein’s 
place as correspondent. 

The police here are in a very ugly mood just now. It would 
seem that, by hook or by crook, they are determined to exploit the 
food shortage to provoke a riot or a mass conspiracy. First they 
scatter all manner of leaflets about; put up placats incendiaires, and 
now they have even manufactured and strewn around fire-raising 
devices which, however, were not set alight, in order to make plain 
to the épicier’ the lengths to which diabolical wickedness can go. 
On top of this they began a fine game with the communistes 
matérialistes'° arresting a whole mass of fellows, among whom A 
knows B, B knows C, C knows D, etc., and now, on the strength of 
these acquaintanceships and a few statements made by witnesses, 
they transmogrify the whole lot of them, for the most part 
unknown to each other, into a ‘gang’. The trial of this ‘gang’ is 
soon to take place, and if the old complicité morale be added to 
this new system, any individual you care to name can be sen- 
tenced without more ado. Cela sent son Hébert.© By this means, 

nothing could be easier than to pin something even on_ peére 
Cabet. 

@ for the rest - > Probably a report from Paris ‘Affaire Martin du Nord’ published 
in the Kélnische Zeitung, No. 67, 8 March 1847. - © inflammatory posters - 4 grocer - 
€ It stinks of Hébert 

If at all possible, do come here some time in April. By 7 April I 
shall be moving—I don’t yet know where to—and about that time 
I shall also have a little money. So for a time we could enjoy 
ourselves famously, squandering our all in taverns. However, since 
the police are being beastly at the moment’! (besides the Saxon I 
wrote to you about, my old opponent Eisermann was banished; 
both have remained here, cf. K. Grün in the Kélner Zeitung’), it 
might be as well to follow Bornstein’s advice. Try to obtain a 
passport from the French Ambassador” on the grounds of your 
emigration; if that doesn’t work, we'll see what can be done at this 
end—no doubt there is still a conservative deputy who can be 
persuaded to help. It’s absolutely essential that you get out of 
ennuyante* Brussels for once and come to Paris, and I for my part 
have a great desire to go carousing with you. Either mauvais sujet* 
or schoolmaster; these are the only alternatives open to one here; 
a mauvais sujet among disreputable good-for-nothings, et cela vous 
va fort mal quand vous n’avez pas d’argent or schoolmaster to 
Ewerbeck, Bernays and Co. Or else submit to wise counsel from 
the leaders of the French radicals which one must later vindicate 
among the other jackasses lest they unduly flaunt their bloated 
Germanness. If I had an income of 5,000 fr. I would do nothing 
but work and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. 
If there were no Frenchwomen, life wouldn’t be worth living. 
Mais tant quil y a des griseties, val Cela n'empéche pas' one 
from sometimes wishing to discuss a decent topic or enjoy life 
with a measure of refinement, neither of which is possible with 
anyone in the whole band of my acquaintances. You must come 
here. 

Have you seen L. Blanc’s Revolution? A wild mixture of correct 
hunches and unbounded craziness. I only read half of the first 
volume while at Sarcelles Ca fait un dréle deffet." Hardly has he 
surprised one with some nice observation when he falls head over 
heels into the most dreadful] lunacy. But L. Blanc has a good nose 
and, despite all the lunacy, the scent he is on is by no means bad. 
Yet he will get no further than the point he has already reached, 
being ‘rooted to the spot by a spell’—ideology. 

@ Reference to [K. Grün,] ‘Uber die Ausweisung von Eisermann und Anderen’, 
Kélnische Zeitung, No. 60, 1 March 1847. -> M. H. Rumigny - © vexatious - 
4 scamp - € and that suits you very badly when you have no money - f But so long as 
there are grisettes, well and good! That doesn’t prevent - & L. Blanc, Histoire de la 
révolution frangaise, t. 1, Paris, 1847. - It makes a curious impression. 

Do you know Achille de Vaulabelle’s Chute de l’Empire, Histoire 
des deux Restaurations? Came out last year, a republican on the 
National, and in the historiographical manner of the old school— 
before Thierry, Mignet, etc. Abysmal lack of insight into the most 
ordinary relations—in this respect even Capefigue in his Cent jours 
does infinitely better—but interesting on account of the Bourbon 
and allied basenesses, all of which he catalogues, and of a fairly 
exact representation and criticism of the facts in so far as his 
national and political interests don’t obtrude. On the whole 
tediously written, however, precisely because of a lack of 
perspective. The National is a bad historian, and Vaulabelle is said 
to be Marrast’s amicus.’ 

Moses has vanished completely. He promises to give lectures to 
those ouvriers with whom I do not ‘consort’, makes himself out to 
be Grtin’s opponent and my intimate friend! God knows and so 
does Moses that, at our second and last entrevue in the Passage 
Vivienne, the painter Kérner and I left him standing agape, in 
order to lead astray two girls Kérner had picked up. Since then I 
have only met him once, on mardi gras,“ when he was dragging his 
world-weary self through the most dreadful downpour and the 
most arid boredom in the direction of the Exchange. We didn’t 
even deign to recognise each other. 

I will take care of the letter to Bakunin '* as soon as I am sure 
of his address—up to now it is still chanceux. 

Apropos, do write to Ewerbeck about the wee pamphlet and make 
fun of him a little; he is most humbly presenting ambas posaderas' and 
is anxious to see blows rained down upon them—you know what I 
mean. 

Well then, write soon and see to it that you come here. 

152 

Your 
F. E.