"Well, I saw him often after that, for I joined the Democratic Club.
Then the government suppressed the paper, and Karl went away to Paris.
Before he went he came to say good bye and told me that he was to
marry Jenny von Westphalen before going to Paris, and I told him that
I was going to marry, too.
"But we never thought that we should meet each other upon our
honeymoons, as we did. I was at Bingen with my Barbara the day after
our wedding when I heard someone calling my name, and when I turned to
see who it was that called me there stood Karl and his Jenny laughing
at me and my Barbara, and all of us were blushing like idiots. Such
happy days those were that we spent at old Bingen!
"I went back to Cologne, to work in the shop belonging to my Barbara's
father, and Karl went to Paris. That was in forty-three. We heard from
him sometimes, and later on we used to get copies of a paper,
_Vorwarts_, which published articles by Karl and other great men.
Bakunin wrote for it, I remember, and so did Heine and Herwegh, our
sweet singers.
"That paper was stopped, too. We heard that Guizot had suppressed the
paper and ordered Karl and some of the other writers to be expelled
from France. It was Alexander von Humboldt who persuaded Guizot, so it
was said. I got a letter from Karl to say that he had settled in
Brussels with his wife and that there was a baby, a little Jenny,
eight months old. Our little Barbara was just the same age.
"Not long after that letters came to the club asking for Karl's
address. They were from Engels, of whom I had never heard before. I
would not give the address until we found out that Engels was a true
friend and comrade. We were all afraid, you see, lest some enemy
wanted to hurt Karl. It was good, though, that I could send the
address to Engels, for I believe that he sent some money to help Karl
out of a very hard struggle. If we had known that he was in trouble
we, his friends in Cologne, would have sent money to help, but Karl
was too proud I suppose to let his trouble be known to us.
III
"It was in the winter of 1847 that I saw him again, in London. For
months all the workingmen's societies had been agitated over the
question of forming an international association with a regular
programme, which Karl had been invited to draw up. A congress was to
be held in London for the purpose of considering Karl's programme and
I was sent by the Cologne comrades as a delegate. All the members
'chipped in' to pay my expenses, and I was very happy to go--happy
because I should see him again.
[Illustration: FREDERICK ENGELS.]
"So I was present at the rooms of the Arbeiterbildungsverein, in Great
Windmill Street, when Karl read the declaration of principles and
programme he had prepared. That was the _Communist Manifesto_, you
know."
"What! were you really present when that immortal declaration of the
independence of our class was read, Hans?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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