"'Yes, Hans, I'm afraid you're right. The International can't amount to much under the circumstances. But it had to be, Hans, it had to be. My health is very poor, and I'm about done for, so far as fighting is concerned. I simply can't keep on fighting Bakunin and his crowd, Hans, and if I drop the fight the International will pass into Bakunin's control. And I'd rather see the organization die in America than live with Bakunin at the head; it's better so, better so, Hans.' And it was then, when I heard him talk like that, and saw how old-looking he had grown in a few months, that I knew we must soon lose Karl." VII "But he did not die soon--he lived more than ten years after that, Hans," said the Young Comrade. "And ten years is a good long time." "Ach, ten years! But what sort of years were they? Tell me that," demanded old Hans with trembling voice. "Ten years of sickness and misery--ten years of perdition, that's what they were, my lad! Didn't I see him waste away like a plant whose roots are gnawed by the worms? Didn't I see his frame shake to pieces almost when that cough took hold of him? Aye, didn't I often think that I'd be glad to hear that he was dead--glad for his own sake, to think that he was out of pain at last? "Yes, he lived ten years, but he was dying all the while. He must have been in pain pretty nearly all the time, every minute an agony! 'Oh, I'd put an end to it all, Hans, if I didn't have to finish _Capital_,' he said to me once as we walked over Hampstead Heath, he leaning upon my arm. 'It's Hell to suffer so, year after year, but I must finish that book. Nothing I've ever done means so much as that to the movement, and nobody else can do it. I must live for _that_, even though every breath is an agony.' "But he didn't live to finish his task, after all. It was left for Engels to put the second and third volumes in shape. A mighty good thing it was for the movement that there was an Engels to do it, I can tell you. Nobody else could have done it. But Engels was like a twin brother to Karl. Some of the comrades were a bit jealous sometimes, and used to call Karl and Engels the 'Siamese twins,' but that made no difference to anybody. If it hadn't been for Engels Karl wouldn't have lived so long as he did, and half his work would never have been done. I never got so close to the heart of Engels as I did to Karl, but I loved him for Karl's sake, and because of the way he always stood by Karl through thick and thin.