202 KARL MARX: A BIOGRAPHYregretted his request when he learned from Freiligrath that Lassalle had
made the affair the talk of the taverns. On 19 July, however, as Jenny
wrote, 'the familiar police sergeant came again and informed us that "Karl
Marx and his wife had to leave Paris within 24 hours" ,.^94 Marx was given
the alternative of moving to the Morbihan district of Brittany He
described the area - rather ungenerously - as 'the pontine marshes of
Brittany'^95 and the whole proposition was 'a disguised attempt at
murder'.^96 He managed at least to obtain a delay by appealing to the
Ministry of the Interior and writing to the Press that he had come to
Paris with 'the general aim of adding to source-material for my work on
the history of political economy that I began five years ago'.^97 Marx still
declared himself 'satisfied' with the political situation. 'Things progress
well', he wrote, 'and the Waterloo that the official democratic party has
experienced is to be treated as a victory.'^98 He asked Weydemeyer to try
to persuade Leske, despite the still outstanding debt, to publish his articles
on 'Wage-Labour and Capital'; he had already put out feelers to Berlin
in the hope of establishing a monthly on economics and politics. On 17
August Marx wrote to Engels that the increasingly reactionary nature
of the French Government gave hope for an immediate revolutionary
insurrection: 'We must start a literary and commercial enterprise: I await
your propositions.'^99 A week later, he sailed for England.
NOTES1. Quoted in L. Somerhausen, LHumanisme agissant de Karl Marx (Paris, 1946 )
p. 245.
2. ME W xxiv 676.
3. The decisions of the meeting are printed in MEGA I vii 587 ff. There was
nothing in the statutes allowing for the transfer of such discretionary power.
4. Marx's account is not quite accurate here: according to the evidence of the
concierge: 'the prisoner having requested a separate room, he was going to
take her there when there was a violent knocking at the door and as he had
several doors to open, he temporarily shut Madame Marx in the common
room where in fact there were three prostitutes. There were two further
summons to the door and he only released Madame Marx when he had
committed the prisoners which could have taken a maximum of a quarter of
an hour. He found the prisoner very sad, tried to console her and in order to
dispel her fears, offered to put her in a room with two beds, which he did in
fact do. He immediately made up one bed for her; the other was occupied by
a woman arrested for assault and battery' (quoted in L. Somerhausen, UHum-
anisme agissant de Karl Marx, p. 241). In order to justify his actions the