"Ach, that was pretty hard, my boy, for Karl was very proud, and I guess Jenny was prouder still. Barbara and I put our heads together and says she: 'We must put some money in a letter and send it to him somehow, in a way that he will never know where it came from, Hans.' Karl knew my writing, but not Barbara's, so she wrote a little letter and put in all the money she had saved up. 'This is from a loyal comrade who knows that Doctor Marx and his family are in need of it,' she wrote. Then we got a young comrade who was unknown to Karl and Engels to deliver the letter to Karl just as he was leaving for his office one morning.
"Barbara and I were very happy that day when we knew that Karl had received the money, but bless your life I don't believe it did him any good at all. He just gave it away."
"Gave away the money—that was giving away his children's bread—almost. Did he do that?"
"Well, all I know is that I heard next day that Karl had visited that same evening, a comrade who was sick and poor and in deep distress, and that when he was leaving he had pressed money into the hand of the comrade's wife, telling her to get some good food and wine for her sick husband. And the amount of the money he gave her was exactly the same as that we had sent to him in the morning.
"Karl was always so. He was the gentlest, kindest-hearted man I ever knew in my life. He could suffer in silence himself, never complaining, but he could not stand the sight of another's misery. He'd stop anything he was doing and go out into the street to comfort a crying child. Many and many a time have I seen him stop on the street to watch the children at play, or to pick up some crying little one in his great strong arms and comfort it against his breast. Never could he keep pennies in his pocket; they all went to comfort the children he met on the streets. Why, when he went to his office in the mornings he would very often have from two to half a dozen children clinging around him, strange children who had taken a fancy to him because he smiled kindly at them and patted their heads.
"I heard nothing from Karl for quite a while after he went to Paris. We wondered, Barbara and I, why he did not write. Then, one day, about three months after he had gone to Paris, came a letter from London and we saw at once that it was in his handwriting. He'd been expelled from Paris again and compelled to leave the city within twenty-four hours, and he and his family were staying in cheap lodgings in Camberwell. He said that everything was going splendidly, but never a word did he say about the terrible poverty and hardship from which they were suffering.
V
"Well, a few months after that, I managed to get into trouble with the authorities at Cologne, along with a few other comrades. We heard that we were to be arrested and knew that we could expect no mercy. So Barbara and I talked things over and we decided to clear out at once, and go to London. We sold our few things to a good comrade, and with the money made our way at once to join Barbara's sister in Dean street. I never dreamed that we should find Karl living next door to us.
"But we did. Nobody told me about him—I suppose that nobody in our house knew who he was—but a few days after we arrived I saw him pass and ran out and called to him. My, he looked so thin and worn out that my heart ached! But he was glad to see me and grasped my hand with both of his. Karl could shake hands in a way that made you feel he loved you more than anybody else in all the world.
"In a little while he had told me enough for me to understand why he was so pale and thin. If it were not for hurting his feelings, I could have cried at the things he told me. He and the beautiful Jenny without food sometimes, and no bed to lie upon! And it seemed all the worse to me because I knew how well they had been reared, how they had been used to solid comfort and even luxury.