[Manchester,] 17 February 1852 

Dear Marx, 

You will be furious with me for being so cursory, but PH be 
damned if I know whether I’m coming or going, what with all this 

4 Louise - > F. Freiligrath, ‘An Joseph Weydemeyer’, I and II. - © K. Marx, The 
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. See also this volume, p. 40. - 4 K. Marx, 
The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850. 

work and commerce. Voici les faits*: 1. Charles” has gone to 
Germany and has left me not only with all his own work, but also 
with a nice little residue of tasks left undone at the year’s end; 
2. Last year’s balance sheet shows a definite loss for my old man 
which may be a good lesson for him, but means that I am 
inundated with an unholy mass of vexations, calculations, and jobs 
of various kinds; 3. One of the Ermens‘* has given notice of 
termination and you can imagine the intrigues and correspon- 
dence which that brings in its train. Enough: this evening I shall 
be stuck in the office until 8 and, instead of being able to write to 
you at greater length, still have to write a letter to my old man and 
take it to the posr orrice before twelve o'clock tonight; tomorrow 
evening I must do something for Jones? and the day after 
tomorrow I shall see to it that I finish an article for the Tribune.‘ 
For the present there can be no thought of spare time before 7 or 
8 in the evening, and the worst of it is that, for some time to 
come, I shall have to devote my whole attention to filthy 
commerce, otherwise everything will go wrong here and my old 
man will cut off my suppures. 

You will have received the £2. I hope to hear from you soon, 
even if I don’t have sufficient leizure to answer your last letter at 
length. 

According to today’s Daily News Louis Napoleon is certain to 
exhume Kaspar Hauser and to claim succession to the throne of 
Baden through his Aunt Stéphanie. Voila de grandes nouvelles pour 
le citoyen Seiler dont Uétoile va se lever incessamment.’ Could you not 
persuade Kaspar Hauser’s great historian to write to Louis 
Napoleon and offer him his important sources on this matter? Il y 
a la de quoi faire un grand coup." 

Your 

How is it that Weydemeyer sends no word? If a letter doesn’t 
arrive by the Arctic tomorrow morning, I shall despair; something 

@ Here are the facts. - > Roesgen - © Gottfried - 4 F. Engels, ‘Real Causes Why the 
French Proletarians Remained Comparatively Inactive in December Last’, I. - € for 
the series Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany -f That’s great news for 
Citizen Seiler, whose star will be constantly in the ascendant - & An allusion to 
Sebastian Seiler’s work Kaspar Hauser, der Thronerbe von Badens.-» A great deal 
could be made of that. 

must. have gone wrong. So far as I know, he has not written since 
5 January, or at least I have heard nothing.