"I trust you wholly," said the father. "I will not reveal what you may say to me."
"Well," returned the son, "I am engaged to marry Jenny von Westphalen. She wishes it kept a secret from her father, but I am at liberty to tell you of it."
The elder Marx was at once shocked and seriously disturbed. Baron von Westphalen was his old and intimate friend. No thought of romance between their children had ever come into his mind. It seemed disloyal to keep the verlobung of Karl and Jenny a secret; for should it be revealed, what would the baron think of Marx? Their disparity of rank and fortune would make the whole affair stand out as something wrong and underhand.
The father endeavored to make his son see all this. He begged him to go and tell the baron, but young Marx was not to be persuaded.
"Send me to Berlin," he said, "and we shall again be separated; but I shall work and make a name for myself, so that when I return neither Jenny nor her father will have occasion to be disturbed by our engagement."
With these words he half satisfied his father, and before long he was sent to Berlin, where he fell manfully upon his studies. His father had insisted that he should study law; but his own tastes were for philosophy and history. He attended lectures in jurisprudence "as a necessary evil," but he read omnivorously in subjects that were nearer to his heart. The result was that his official record was not much better than it had been at Bonn.
The same sort of restlessness, too, took possession of him when he found that Jenny would not answer his letters. No matter how eagerly and tenderly he wrote to her, there came no reply. Even the most passionate pleadings left her silent and unresponsive. Karl could not complain, for she had warned him that she would not write to him. She felt that their engagement, being secret, was anomalous, and that until her family knew of it she was not free to act as she might wish.
Here again was seen the wisdom of her maturer years; but Karl could not be equally reasonable. He showered her with letters, which still she would not answer. He wrote to his father in words of fire. At last, driven to despair, he said that he was going to write to the Baron von Westphalen, reveal the secret, and ask for the baron's fatherly consent.
It seemed a reckless thing to do, and yet it turned out to be the wisest. The baron knew that such an engagement meant a social sacrifice, and that, apart from the matter of rank, young Marx was without any fortune to give the girl the luxuries to which she had been accustomed. Other and more eligible suitors were always within view. But here Jenny herself spoke out more strongly than she had ever done to Karl. She was willing to accept him with what he was able to give her. She cared nothing for any other man, and she begged her father to make both of them completely happy.
Thus it seemed that all was well, yet for some reason or other Jenny would not write to Karl, and once more he was almost driven to distraction. He wrote bitter letters to his father, who tried to comfort him. The baron himself sent messages of friendly advice, but what young man in his teens was ever reasonable? So violent was Karl that at last his father wrote to him: