Sir, In your issue of this morning your Paris correspondent, amongst other inaccuracies concerning the family of my late friend Karl Marx, states that after the Commune the French Minister of justice ordered the arrest of M. Paul Lafargue, recently elected deputy at Lille. He then continues Mrs. Aveling, the daughter of Mrs. Marx, being for the moment absent from London, the duty of repelling the above-mentioned accusation against her mother devolves upon me. The facts are these: M. Lafargue, while staying with his wife and his two sisters-in-law at Bagn res-de-Luchon, was informed of his impending arrest by a friendly Republican police-officer. He escaped the same day into Spain, passing the Pyren es on horseback. Mrs. Marx, who was then in London, therefore could not, even if she had been so minded, interfere on his behalf by betraying to the French Government anything whatever. The whole story of the pretended depot of arms is a mere fable, invented to blacken the memory of a woman whose noble and self-sacrificing nature was utterly incapable of a mean action. I am, Sir, your obedient servant. 122, Regent s-park-road, N.W., Nov. 17.
Works of Frederick Engels 1890