[London,] 3 July 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Engels, 

I am late, but I have come.* How the delay came about, you will 
see from the tale recounted below: 

In London, the manuscript was copied out at once. By Monday 
noon“ it was all ready and complete. I dictated it by turns to my 
wife and Dronke. At midday on Wednesday I received the money. 
Bangya deducted the £7 about which you know. Add to that what 
was owed Dronke for his collaboration. This left an amount that 
did not even suffice for household needs. Strohn’s circumstances 
were such that he could not pay. And then came a run of 
exceptional ill-luck. 

Klose’s wife, long ailing and wasting away in hospital, was 
discharged by the dirty dogs at the precise moment she was 
entering her final crisis, and died in his house three days ago. Not 
a centime available, funeral expenses, etc. Freiligrath could do 
nothing, having just bled all his acquaintances in order to help 
send Heilberg’s wife and child back to Breslau, keep Heilberg 
himself alive and, finally, get him into hospital. Thus the thing 
devolved on me, and a vast amount of time and trouble it cost me 
before it was settled. Maintenant‘ all is peace and quiet again. 

The ‘gang’ are racking their brains over our pamphlet. Notably 
the Meyen-bug,° who is in a cold sweat. He is ‘quite unable to 
recall the least trespass against us’. Willich has had me sounded as 
to whether the Brtiningk affair appears in it. The thought makes 
him exceedingly uneasy. 

“The true course’ of this curious happening would now appear 
to be as follows: 

First, as you know, Willich denied it outright. His 2nd version 
ran: ‘Mrs Briiningk has sought to corrupt him politically. Used Mr 
von Willich left and right, and other such means of corruption.’ It 

a The German original is reminiscent of Schiller, Die Piccolomini, Act I, Scene 1. 
-> K. Marx and F. Engels, The Great Men of the Exile. -¢ 28 June - 4 Now - 
e Eduard Meyen (see present edition, Vol. 11, p. 306). 

was with ‘moral intent’, therefore, that he created a diversion in 
the region of her private parts. 

But now our partisan leader has put yet another construction on 
the case. “The Briningk woman (or so Imandt once told him) is a 
Russian spy. She tries to entrap young refugees. Old Willich stood 
in her way. Hence the anecdote intended to ruin him in the eyes 
of the émigrés. How political, deliberate and diabolical was this 
trumped-up “anecdote”, emerges from the very fact of its having 
been Mrs Bruningk’s own husband who circulated the rumour of 
the outrage for the sole purpose of discrediting Willich.’ 

But that is not all. The chivalrous Schimmelpfennig maintains 
that Willich invented the spy story to conceal the insubordination 
of his ‘cazze.* As things now stand, the issue remains undecided 
between these two worthies, and Willich, taking refuge in one lie 
after another, is well and truly compromising himself. 

The cuckold Briiningk reminds me of a nice joke I found a few 
days ago in one of Machiavelli's commedia: 

Nicia (cuckold): Chi @ San cu cu? 
Ligurio: E il pitt honorato santo che sia in Francia” 

Willich and Kinkel mightily worried about how best to effect a 
revolution on £1,200. Schurz, Schimmelpfennig, Strodtmann, etc., 
are drawing further and further away from Kinkel. 

Not even 100 horsepower could drag Willich away from the 
coffre-fort< 

Kinkel, knowing that Imandt and I see each other, calls on 
Imandt a week ago and says, ‘What a pity it was my Economy had 
not yet come out, so that one might at last have a positive basis to 
go on.’ Imandt questions him about Freiligrath’s poem." ‘Never 
read such things,’ retorts Godofredus. 

The most ludicrous thing about it is that, having existed for 
years solely by abusing us the curs now declare it beneath ‘our 
dignity’ and ‘station’ to write such t-t-tittle-tattle. Les dréles!* 

However, a new prospect has opened up before the wretched 
Willich-Kinkel, the pair who are to effect the revolution. Messrs 
Rodbertus, Kirchmann and other ambitious ministerial candidates 
have dispatched a legate to London. For these gentlemen, in 
imitation of the French, want Vogt to set up a German Carbonari 
association. Connections with even the most extreme of parties. 
Paper money is to be issued in Germany to defray the costs. Since 

4 ‘organ’ - > Nicia: Who is St. Cuckoo? Ligurio: The most venerated saint in 
France. (Machiavelli, Mandragola, Act 4, Scene IX.) - © safe - 4 F, Freiligrath, ‘An 
Joseph Weydemeyer’, I and II. - © The rogues! 

they are, however, anxious to emerge more or less unscathed, it is 
the émigrés, and of ‘all’ parties, who are to underwrite this paper. 

Schapper has been sounding me and making contrite admissions 
through Imandt. Replied that he must first break publicly with 
Willich, and then we should see. That was the conditio sine qua?’ 

You will have read about the new arrests in Paris.’ The boobies 
(this time the Ruge clique) naturally had to come up with yet 
another pseudo-conspiracy. Their correspondent in Paris, as I was 
informed some considerable time ago, is one Englander, a 
notorious police spy (in Paris) who, of course, immediately passes 
all their letters to the service. Not content with that, the French 
police have sent Simon Deutsch over here to pump Tausenau. 
Louis Napoleon must have a conspiracy, cost what it may. 

But he has got one on his hands about which as yet he seems to 
know nothing. That of the Orleans family, whose agent Mr 
Bangya (with the assent of the Hungarian ‘radicals’) has now 
become. The plan: Bonaparte is to be caught out one evening 
with his drab, to whom he goes slinking behind the Englishwo- 
man’s back. A senior police officer has been suborned. Two 
generals are said to have been won over. Nemours himself was in 
Paris a fortnight ago. Large sums paid out for the distribution of 
anti-Louis Napoleon pamphlets. 

What do you think of it? If one of the Orleans were again to 
visit Paris and we happened to know when, should we, d’une 
maniére ou d’une autre,” denounce the ‘vrai prince’ to the ‘faux 
prince“? Let me have your views on the matter. 

Cherval, the cur, has also handed over to the Prussians the letter 
sent him by Pfander. 

Au revoir 

Your 
K. M. 

Not a word from that blessed Weydemeyer. Bonaparte will 
probably be in America before my pamphlet about him“ reaches 
Europe. If possible, send me an article for Dana soon.‘ 

Herewith the introduction to the Dubbit amorosi by Pietro 
Aretino, the forefather (but wittier) of Cassagnac. 

2 indispensable condition - > one way or another - © ‘true prince’, ‘false prince’ - 
4K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. - © Presumably, Revolution 
and Counter-Revolution in Germany, XV. 

Prefazione. Magnifico utriusque Ser Agnello, 
Voi qui scribere scitis quare, quia, 
Espelle, volte fatte co’l cervello, 
Di Bartolo e Baldo notomia, 
E le leggi passate co’l castello, 
Nella vostra bizarra fantasia, 
Questi dubbii, di grazia, mi chiarite 
Ch’oggi in Bordello han mosso un gran lite. 

Vi sono genti fottenti, e fottute; 
E di potte e di cazzi notomie. 
E nei culi molt? anime perdute, etc.#