MARX TO ENGELS” 

[London,] 8 May 1857 

Dear Frederick, 

The £5 received. 

Herewith a letter from Lassalle* which,-when Lupus has seen it, 
you should return to me at the beginning of next week. What 
should I do about fellow? Reply or not reply? You'll be amused by 
the comical vanity of the laddie, who will do anything to become 
famous and, entirely without provocation, writes 75 sheets on 
Greek philosophy.” 

I have written to Dana in exactly the terms you suggested. As 
regards your Bazancourt,” I had already urged him to return it. 
Steffen doesn’t know of any book such as you require; he himself 
appears to be engaged on an English translation of Rustow’s 
Caisars Heerwesen. 

Pieper is on the point of falling back into his former foolishness. 
Has written me a ‘genius’s’ letter. The enthusiasm—not the 
enthusiasm inspired in him by his new post, but that which he 
inspired in his new post cum attendant principal—appears as 
usvaLty to have waned. He wishes to go to Switzerland as a 
‘courier’, or else sever connections with his principal at mid- 
summer and once again cut a dash in London with £20 in his 
pocket. When I next write I shall pour cold water on the genius. 
If he is ever to become ‘serviceable’ again this young man must 
endure the parson’s lash for some while yet. 

Have you read the Crédit mobilier’s* last report? It was in The 
Times. Indicates a DECLINE. 

Pam as reformer! He’ll reform those boys with A VENGEANCE, 

If you possibly can, write a military piece on Persia or China 
next week. My wife is drawing ever closer to the catastrophe and is 
finding her secretarial duties increasingly onerous. 

As regards your toothache, I would advise you to have recourse 
to the same means as I did after eighteen months’ hesitation. Pull 

a Lassalle’s letter to Marx of 26 April 1857 - > Lassalle’s Die Philosophie Herakleitos des 
Dunklen von Ephesos, published later. - © “The Crédit Mobilier of France’, The Times, 
No. 22670, 2 May 1857. 

the bugger out! I, too, always supposed my toothache to be 
rheumatic. Yet in the end a corpus delicti was discovered after all. 
When are you coming down here? 

Salut. 

Your 

K. M. 

With the coming of spring the children always go down with 
various ailments. So it has been again, first the youngest* and 
Laura and now it’s little Jenny’s turn.