London, 30 November 1883 

Dear Old Man, 

I can’t tell you how glad I was to see your own handwriting again. 
Nowhere had I been able to learn anything definite about how you 
were getting on, and am now glad to know that you are at least to 
some extent back on your feet again. 

I, too, have been in bed for a good month now, in order to rid myself 
of a mild but most tiresome and prolonged ailment, and can only 
write very briefly since any position but the horizontal is forbidden 
me. But no doubt I, too, will soon be up again and able to tackle the 
large accumulation of work. 

As soon as I can resume the task of putting Marx’s papers in order, 
I shall look out the things you want,!?° but everything is still in the 
utmost disorder since I have to attend to everything myself. Mme La- 
fargue has been living in Paris for a year or more now, and the young- 
est sister * has furnished a couple of rooms nearby — nearby being half 
an hour’s walk from here, and since it is I alone who must decide 
what is important and what is not among the vast mass of papers, 
etc., it is understandable that, considering her many literary activi- 
ties, she should leave the sorting out to me. 

I, too, hope that I shall see you again, my old comrade-in-arms, 
somewhere some day — who knows whether it might not be, as once 
before, at Durlach and Vohrenbach in mid-campaign '?’? How won- 
derful that would be! And, after all, the present swindle can’t go on 
for very much longer, provided Mr Bismarck does not again hold up 
or temporarily obstruct revolutionary developments by unleashing 
a general war, as is clearly his intention. 

You will be getting from the post office a money order for £5 ster- 
ling. 

* Eleanor Marx 

But now I must lie down flat on my back again. Goodbye, old man. 
See that you get fit again, and write sometimes to your old, trusty 

F. Engels