Letter to Laura Lafargue, December 15, 1882

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 15 December 1882


First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, Second Russian Edition, Vol. 35, Moscow 1964
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46


ENGELS TO LAURA LAFARGUE

IN PARIS

London, 15 December 1882

My dear Laura,

Only after 7 last night Percy[1] came with the needful so there was nothing to be done before today, so now I enclose a five-pound Bank of England note the number of which I have kept here, and will run the risk to send it whole for once.

No doubt you will by this time be quite assured about Paul's[2] fate, at least for the present.[3] I have no doubt he is free again now, if not already back in Paris. But I am afraid the Bonapartist and other conservative judges of Montluçon will give them[4] a couple of months each of retired life. The government evidently wishes to create a few precedents in the provinces before it dares to try repression in Paris. And thus the parquet[5] at Montluçon engaged the business, which, once engaged, must be carried out by the judges to the desired end, were it only to save the credit of the magistrature. And as the case will no doubt come before the police correctionnelle,[6] there can be not even that shadow of a doubt which a jury might still have rendered possible.

The change to a short prison life would not in itself have anything very dreadful, indeed I think it would do Paul more good than harm.

But very likely their time will come at a moment when they, Paul and Guesde, are both most wanted for the Egalité. And the paper had so much improved lately. Whether it is the cumulative effect of Parisian life and journalistic activity, Paul's articles lately have been very much better, since he dropped the dogmatism of the scientific oracle and took up the ligne spirituelle.[7] That on the candidature [of] Bontoux was charming,[8] but I think I discover a little female hand in that here and there. So was that on the behexte ministerium[9] *[10] (I forgot the French title) which also pleased Mohr specially.[11] Now if Paul and Guesde are locked up, the soul of the paper is gone. Deville is witty and amusing only at intervals, generally he is clear but dull and doctrinaire, Massard is the reverse of a good Christian, for that with him the flesh is willing but the spirit (esprit) is weak. And I must conclude, from what information I possess, that Paul and Guesde are also the two who will be most wanted in a financially critical moment. Thus it will be a great pity that just at this time dynamitic brag and competition with the rrrrevolutionarism of the anarchists should have brought them in this predicament.

Anyhow I hope you look down upon these petites misères du haut de votre troisième[12] with the same calmness as the quarante siècles[13] of General Bonaparte du kaut de leurs pyramides[14] on the French army and Bonaparte himself.

How is Jenny[15] getting on? is she better? I do not hear much about her at Maitland Park,[16] indeed they[17] do not know much themselves.

Very affectionately yours,

F. E.

  1. ↑ Rosher
  2. ↑ Lafargue
  3. ↑ Hermann Arnoldt, a Königsberg Social-Democrat and member of the local Johann Jacoby Fund committee (a fund for assisting the Social-Democratic press), requested Engels to accept for safekeeping the Fund's securities to the amount of about 3,000 marks, fearing confiscation by the Prussian government after the promulgation of the Anti-Socialist Law (see Note 462).
  4. ↑ Lafargue and Guesde
  5. ↑ prosecutor's office
  6. ↑ disciplinary court
  7. ↑ line of wit
  8. ↑ The French Marshal Bazaine, who had surrendered the Metz fortress in October 1870 during the Franco-Prussian war, was charged with high treason and sentenced to death in December 1873. Two days later, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In August 1874, after eight months in prison, Bazaine fled to Spain.
  9. ↑ spellbound ministry
  10. ↑ Engels is probably referring to José Mesa's letter of 24 August 1874. The latter wrote that despite his enforced move to Paris he still kept in touch with members of the Spanish section of the International Working Men's Association in Madrid, on which Engels could rely, and supplied a number of addresses.
  11. ↑ See this volume, p. 385.
  12. ↑ petty miseries from the height of your third floor
  13. ↑ forty centuries
  14. ↑ from the height of their pyramids
  15. ↑ Longuet
  16. ↑ the Marx family's address in London
  17. ↑ Eleanor Marx and Helene Demuth