t174 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYon his inheritance'.^1 On 3 March Marx received an order, signed by the
King, to leave Belgium within twenty-four hours. The same day he
received from Paris a reply to his request for the cancellation of the
previous expulsion order:
Brave and loyal Marx,
The soil of the French Republic is a place of refuge for all friends
of freedom. Tyranny has banished you, free France opens her doors to
you and all those who fight for the holy cause, the fraternal cause of
all peoples. Every officer of the French Government must interpret his
mission in this sense. Salut et Fratemite.
Ferdinand Flocon
Member of the Provisional Government.^2
Yet Marx was not left to depart in peace. The same evening the Central
Committee of the Communist League met in the Bois Sauvage guest
house where Marx had moved a week earlier on receipt of his inheritance,
and decided to transfer the seat of the Central Committee to Paris and
to give Marx discretionary powers over all the League's affairs.^5 At one
o'clock in the morning the over-zealous local police commissioner broke
into the guest house and arrested Marx. A week later in a letter of protest
to the Paris paper La Reforme, he described the situation:
I was occupied in preparing my departure when a police commissioner,
accompanied by ten civil guards, penetrated into my home, searched
the whole house and finally arrested me on the pretext of my having
no papers. Leaving aside the very correct papers that Monsieur Duch-
atel gave me on my expulsion from France, I had in my hands the
deportation pass that Belgium had issued to me only several hours
before....
Immediately after my arrest, my wife had herself gone to M. Jot-
trand, President of the Belgian Democratic Association, to get him to
take the necessary steps. On returning home, she found a policeman in
front of the door who told her, with exquisite politeness, that if she
wanted to talk to Monsieur Marx, she had only to follow him. My wife
eagerly accepted the offer. She was taken to the police station and the
commissioner told her at first that Monsieur Marx was not there; he
brusquely asked her who she was, what she was doing at Monsieur
Jottrand's house and whether she had any papers with her.... On the
pretext of vagabondage my wife was taken to the prison of the Town
Hall and locked in a dark room with lost women.^4 At eleven o'clock in
the morning she was taken, in full daylight and with a whole escort of
policemen, to the magistrate's office. For two hours she was put in a
cell in spite of the most forceful protests that came from all quarters.
She stayed there exposed to the rigours of the weather and the shameful
propositions of the warders.