"And did you meet Lassalle, too?" asked the Young Comrade in awed tones.
"Aye, that night and many times after that. Karl greeted me warmly and introduced me to Lassalle. Then we went out for a drink of lager beer—just us four—Karl, Lassalle, Engels and me. They told me that they had come to start another paper in the place of the one that had been suppressed five years before. Money had been promised to start it, Karl was to be the chief editor and Engels his assistant. The new paper was to be called the Neue Rhenische Zeitung and Freiligrath, George Weerth, Lassalle, and many others, were to write for it. So we drank a toast to the health and prosperity of the new paper.
"Well, the paper came out all right, and it was not long before Karl's attacks upon the government brought trouble upon it. The middle class stockholders felt that he was too radical, and when he took the part of the French workers, after the terrible defeat of June, they wanted to get rid of their chief editor. There was no taming a man like Karl.
"One day I went down to the office with a notice for a committee of which I was a member, and Karl introduced me to Michael Bakunin, the great Russian Anarchist leader. Karl never got along very well with Bakunin and there was generally war going on between them.
"Did you ever hear of Robert Blum, my lad? Ever read the wonderful verses Freiligrath wrote about him? I suppose not. Well, Blum was a moderate Democrat, a sort of Liberal who belonged to the Frankfort National Assembly. When the insurrection of October, 1848, broke out in Vienna Blum was sent there by the National Assembly, the so-called 'parliament of the people.'
"He assumed command of the revolutionary forces and was captured and taken prisoner by the Austrian army and ordered to be shot. I remember well the night of the ninth of February when the atrocious deed was committed. We had a great public meeting. The hall was crowded to suffocation. I looked for Karl, but he was nowhere to be seen. He was a very busy man, you see, and had to write a great deal for his paper at night.
"It was getting on for ten o'clock when Karl appeared in the hall and made his way in silence to the platform. Some of the comrades applauded him, but he raised his hand to silence them. We saw then that he held a telegram in his hand, and that his face was as pale as death itself. We knew that something terrible had happened, and a great hush fell over the meeting. Not a sound could be heard until Karl began to read.
"The telegram was very brief and very terrible. Robert Blum had been shot to death in Vienna, according to martial law, it said. Karl read it with solemn voice, and I thought that I could see the murder taking place right there in the hall before my eyes. I suppose everybody felt just like that, for there was perfect silence—the kind of silence that is painful—for a few seconds. Then we all broke out in a perfect roar of fury and cheers for the Revolution.
"I tried to speak to Karl after the meeting, but he brushed me aside and hurried away. His face was terrible to behold. He was the Revolution itself in human shape. As I looked at him I knew that he would live to avenge poor Blum.
"Blum's death was followed by the coup de' etat. The King appointed a new ministry and the National Assembly was dissolved. The Neue Rhenische Zeitung came out then with a notice calling upon all citizens to forcibly resist all attempts to collect taxes from them. That meant war, of course, war to the knife, and we all knew it.