"Ach, what a glorious time we had on that journey to Brussels! Sometimes Karl and Engels would talk seriously about the great cause, and I just listened and kept my mouth shut while my ears were wide open. At other times they would throw off their seriousness as a man throws off a coat, and then they would tell stories and sing songs, and of course I joined in. People say--people that never knew the real Karl--that he was gloomy and sad, that he couldn't smile. I suppose that is because they never saw the simple Karl that I knew and loved, but only Marx, the great leader and teacher, with a thousand heavy problems burdening his mind. But the Marx that I knew--my friend Karl--was human, boy, very human. He could sing a song, tell a good story, and enjoy a joke, even at his own expense." A smile lit up the face of the Young Comrade. "I'm so glad of that, Hans," he said. "I've always been told that he was a sad man, without a sense of humor; that he was never known to unbend from his stiff gravity. But you say that he was not so; that he could laugh and joke and sing: I like him better so." Old Hans seemed not to hear the words of the Young Comrade, though he was silent while they were spoken. A faint smile played around his lips, and the far-away expression of his eyes told that the smile belonged to the memory of other days. It was dark now in the little shop; only the flickering light of the fitful fire in the tiny grate enabled the Young Comrade to see his friend. It was the Young Comrade who broke the silence at last: "Tell me more, Hans, for I am still hungry to learn about him." The old man nodded and turned to put some chips upon the fire in the grate. Then he continued: "It was about the last of February, 1848, that we got the first copies of the _Communist Manifesto_ at Cologne. Only a day or two before that we had news of the outbreak of the Revolution in Paris. I have still my copy of the _Manifesto_ which Karl sent me from Paris. "You see, he had been expelled from Brussels by order of the Government. Prussia had requested this, so Karl wrote me, and he was arrested and ordered to leave Belgium at once. So he went at once to Paris. Only a week before that the Provisional Government had sent him an official invitation to come back to the city from which Guizot had expelled him. It was like a conqueror that he went, you may imagine. "Boy, you can never understand what we felt in those days. Things are not so any more. We all thought that the day of our victory was surely nigh. Karl had made us believe that when things started in France the proletariat of all Europe would awaken: 'When the Gallican cock crows the German workers will rise,' he used to say. And now the cock's crowing had been heard! The Revolution was successful in France--so we thought--and the people were planting trees of liberty along the boulevards.