London, 3 December 1852 
28 Dean Street, Soho 

Dear Frederic, 

You would long ago have had an answer to your letter 
(enclosing the article for Dana’), had I not been occupied with the 
dictation of the final version of my pamphlet,” and then delayed 
by visits from Weerth, Strohn, Damm, etc. 

In all probability the pamphlet will be printed in Switzerland by 
Schabelitz junior, who has left his old man and set up his own 
bookshop. Moreover, if Cluss thinks he can recoup the cost of 
production, he can have the thing printed in Washington. Printed 
it must be, if only so that it may be available as a public document 
after the outbreak of the revolution. I have made some further, 
very interesting discoveries about the Cherval conspiracy, etc., 
which I hope you will be reading in print.*” 

Weerth called on Sunday evening, and found me very busy.and 
not in the best of moods. He asked me ‘what did I propose, 
actually, to write about the Cologne affair?’—and this in somewhat 
superior, nasal tones. J asked ‘what did he propose to do in the 
West Indies?’ and, after a quarter of an hour or so, he made off. 
On Tuesday evening he reappeared and said he. had not wished to 
come back, actually, but had yielded to Freiligrath’s insistence. For 
on Sunday I had seemed to him very busy and out of temper. I 
took the liberty of pointing out to Mr Weerth that, for 9/10ths of 
the time I had known him, he had always been out of temper and 
MALCONTENT, which was something he couldn’t say of me. After I 
had given him a piece of my mind, he pulled himself together and 
became .the old Weerth again. He seems to me to have become 
damned bourgeoisified and to be taking his career too much ‘au 
sérieux” Strohn at least is the same as ever, and pas trop fin! 

2 F, Engels, ‘The Late Trial at Cologne’. - & K. Marx, Revelations Concerning the 
Communist Trial in Cologne. - © seriously - 4 not too clever 

10* 

Today Mr Bangya has received the following letter from me?: 

‘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 
sent not direct but only poste restante, through the medium of a 
second 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 such person as Collmann exists at the addréss indicated, 
58 or 59 Neue KOnigsstr. 

‘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 two 
Eisermann, and in the third 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 conjure away 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 etc., 
Marx 

@ See this volume, pp. 257-58. - > ibid., p. 252. - © K. Marx and F. Engels, The 
Great Men of the Exile. - 4 ‘It looks as though they have been trying to hoodwink us 
after all.’ 

‘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.’ 

Tomorrow we shall see what reply comes from Mr Bangya. 

Bonaparte is spending some glorious months honeymooning 
with his empire. The fellow has always lived on tick. Simply make 
loan institutions in France as universal and as accessible as possible 
to all classes of Frenchmen—and the whole world will believe that 
the millennium is here. On top of that, a bank of one’s own, no 
less, for stockjobbery and railway uumBuc.* The fellow never 
changes. Not for one moment does the chevalier d’industrie* deny 
the pretender, or vice versa. If he doesn’t go to war and that right 
soon, he'll founder on his finances. How good that Proudhon’s 
plans for salvation should find realisation in the only form in 
which they are practicable—that of the credit racket and more or 
less barefaced fraud. 

1 am looking forward very much to your arrival here.*’ 

Your 
K. Marx