Letters from France and Italy (1847-1852)

beginning of this year 1854 and I raised a cry of indignation, the mud of ignoble accusations and vile allusions. They have no need of the truth at present; for the moment, one must be silent or speak of something else.

These letters have no direct relation to current events. They have remained as they were written from 1847 to 1852. I have omitted only a few details that are boring now, but I have touched neither the substance nor the form.

In writing these letters, under the noise and din of events, I was often carried away, but I have always been sincere; I vouch for it, and that is why I think these letters will not be devoid, for the reader, of the interest they excited in Germany (**).

() "Letters to W. Linton Esq." In his journal The English Republic*, in the first issues of 1854.

(**) The first four letters were inserted in the journal Le Contemporain The Contemporary in 1847 under the title: "Letters from the Avenue Marigny." It goes without saying that the red specter of censorship was constantly before my eyes when I wrote them. The seven following letters were published at the beginning of 1850 in Hamburg by Hofmann and Kampe: ("Letters from Italy and France by a Russian"). The rest has not yet been printed. I was offered the chance to insert them into the journal of the French refugees in England; I even wrote a letter to the editor on this subject (see L'Homme The Man, Feb. 22, 1854), but I abandoned this project, not wishing to provoke a new controversy.