[Rough copy] 
London, 3 December 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Bangya, 

I have today received from Engels a letter containing some 
highly curious pieces of information.” 

Engels has not written to the address indicated by you for, as he 
points out, what is actually proved by an answer to a letter that is 

4 swindler - > See this volume, p. 252. 

sent not direct but only poste restante, through the medium of a 
2nd address? 

Instead, Engels asked some business friends in Berlin to make 
inquiries. After the most painstaking investigations they now tell 
him that: 

1. no such firm as Collmann exists; 

2. no Collmann exists at the address indicated, 58 or 59 Neue 
Königsstr. and 

3. no one at all by the name of Collmann is to be found in 
Berlin. 

Engels further draws my attention to the fact that the two letters 
signed Eisermann and the letter signed Collmann were written by 
the same hand, that all 3 possess the unusual quality of being loose 
bits of paper bearing no postmark, that in the first 2 Eisermann, 
and in the 3rd Collmann, figures directly as publisher, etc., and 
that on pretexts that are mutually incompatible the thing has been 
allowed to drag on for nearly 7 months. Now that Collmann has 
proved to be as much of an illusion as was previously the 
non-existent publisher of the Constitutionelle Zeitung, Eisermann, I 
ask you yourself, how can all these contradictions, improbabilities 
and mysteries over something so simple as the publication of a 
pamphlet be rationally explained? 

‘Trust’ will not dispose of facts, nor do people who respect one 
another demand unquestioning faith of one another. 

I confess that, the more I turn this matter over in my mind, the 
more I am compelled, even with the best will in the world, to find 
it damned obscure; also that, were it not for my feelings of 
friendship towards you, I would unhesitatingly echo Engels’ 
concluding remark: ‘Aprés tout il parait pourtant qu’on a voulu nous 
jouer. * 

Yours ever, 
K. Marx 

P.S. Engels finally draws my attention to the fact that, even 
were the manuscript in question to reappear for a few days in 
London,*"' absolutely nothing would be proved and nothing 
gained. What could it prove, save the existence and identity of the 
manuscript, of which nobody is in doubt.