"Ach, that used to make me mad—the way they lied about Karl. The papers used to print stories about the 'Brimstone League,' a sort of 'inner circle' connected with the International, though we all knew there was never such a thing in existence. Karl was accused of trying to plan murders and bloody revolutions, the very thing he hated and feared above everything else. Always fighting those who talked that way, he was; said they were spies and hired agents of the enemy, trying to bring the movement to ruin. Didn't he oppose Weitling and Herwegh and Bakunin on that very ground?
"I was with Karl when Lassalle visited him, in 1862, and heard what he said then about foolish attempts to start revolutions by the sword. Lassalle had sent a Captain Schweigert to Karl a little while before that with a letter, begging Karl to help the Captain raise the money to buy a lot of guns for an insurrection. Karl had refused to have anything to do with the scheme, and Lassalle was mad about it. 'Your ways are too slow for me, my dear Marx,' he said. 'Why, it'll take a whole generation to develop a political party of the proletariat strong enough to do anything.'
"Karl smiled in that quiet way he had and said: 'Yes, it's slow enough, friend Lassalle, slow enough. But we want brains for the foundation of our revolution—brains, not powder. We must have patience, lots of patience. Mushrooms grow up in a night and last only a day; oaks take a hundred years to grow, but the wood lasts a thousand years. And it's oaks we want, not mushrooms.'"
"How like Marx that was, Hans," said the Young Comrade then, "how patient and far-seeing! And what did Lassalle think of that?"
"He never understood Karl, I think. Anyhow, Karl told me that Lassalle ceased to be his friend after that meeting. There was no quarrel, you understand, only Lassalle realized that he and Karl were far apart in their views. 'Lassalle is a clever man all right,' Karl used to say, 'but he wants twelve o'clock at eleven, like an impatient child.' And there's lots of folks like Lassalle in that respect, my lad; folks that want oaks to grow in a night like mushrooms.
"Well, I stayed in the International until the very last, after the Hague Congress when it was decided to make New York the headquarters. That was a hard blow to me, lad. It looked to me as if Karl had made a mistake. I felt that the International was practically killed when the General Council was moved to America, and told Karl so. But he knew that as well as I did, only he couldn't help himself.
"'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?