Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868
Source: MECW, Volume 43, p. 52;
First published: abridged in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx Stuttgart, 1913 and in full in MEGA, Berlin, 1931.
Dear Moor,
You lifted a heavy stone from all our hearts with your letter of yesterday. The day before yesterday and even yesterday everybody here in the house was very depressed, but today everybody is merry as a cricket again, and I myself feel quite different.
The article is finished. You are quite right, Sam is the man to sign it. I shall tell him today and at the same time give him the article to look through and to note possible Germanisms. But let me know by return whether I can keep it for a few days more, say, till Wednesday evening; if not, I can send it off on Monday. The second and final article (the first goes up to the conclusion of absolute surplus value) can then be finished by the end of this inst., since I am unlikely to leave here before then, so the two articles can directly follow one another. First I shall send the Zukunft the article about Prussian military nomenclature.
Salut, ô connétable de Saint Pancrace! Now you should get yourself a worthy outfit: a red nightshirt, white nightcap, down-at-the-heel slippers, white pants, a long clay pipe and a pot of porter. Lafargue, as your squire, can invent his uniform himself. As you see, the Pancratian philistines insist that you should sacrifice yourself for the common good. And this year-long, touching attachment which nothing could shake — this you intend to reciprocate with the cold negation of Kiss my — - ? But ‘that’s just like the communists’.
Give Jennychen my heartiest greetings and tell her that since she has now finally had a fever, I would like to have heard her speaking in delirium; there would have been more sense and poetry in it than fat Freiligrath will ever develop. Ditto best greetings to your wife and the two Lafargues.
Your
F. E.