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Updated: June 11, 2025
At last I noticed that these attacks were met by witty and forcible little snubs, and also that encouraging comments appeared in my favour, which for some time surprised me very much, as I knew that only enemies and never friends interested themselves in such cases. But I learned, to my amusement, from Rockel, that he and my friend Heine had carried out this inspiriting campaign on my behalf.
With Rockel himself, whose sentence had by royal mercy been commuted to lifelong imprisonment, I carried on at this time a correspondence, the character of which soon showed that his life was more cheerful and happy in his enforced captivity than mine with its hopelessness, in spite of the freedom I enjoyed.
When I inquired after Rockel, Bakunin replied swiftly that he had not been seen since the previous evening, and that he had most likely allowed himself to be caught: he was in such a nervous state. I now gave an account of what I had observed on my way to and from Chemnitz, describing the great masses of reinforcements, amongst which was the communal guard of that place, several thousands strong.
Scarcely was Rockel safely across the Bohemian frontier, while I was still toiling at great inconvenience to myself in the printer's office, in order to provide material for an issue of his paper, when the long-expected storm burst over Dresden.
Arriving in London on 2nd March I first went to see Ferdinand Prager. In his youth he had been a friend of the Rockel brothers, who had given me a very favourable account of him. He proved to be an unusually good-natured fellow, though of an excitability insufficiently balanced by his standard of culture.
I now learned for the first time what the prevalent opinion was about these much-maligned occurrences in Germany, and I was in a position to defend my poor friend Rockel, who had been branded as a coward, and to put not only his conduct but also my own in a different light to that in which it had been regarded hitherto even by Hermann Franck, who afterwards expressed his sincere regret that he had so misunderstood us.
As a matter of fact, I had heard a rumour that Rockel had arrived on this very day, but as yet I had not obtained a glimpse of him. My young nieces helped once more to raise my spirits. The firing had put them into a high state of glee, which to some extent infected my wife, as soon as she was reassured as to my personal safety.
This indeed was the expression of my real feelings, which had long been suppressed, and now broke out into almost jubilant utterance. At that moment I caught sight of Rockel, with two men of the citizen army who were carrying some guns, making his way towards me.
Only a few days elapsed before the execution of this little plan; but they were destined to be momentous ones. On the 1st of May the Chambers were dissolved by the new Beust ministry, which the King had charged with carrying out his proposed reactionary policy. This event imposed upon me the friendly task of caring for Rockel and his family.
But I found my greatest consolation in those days of trouble and anxiety in Rockel, who from that time forward entered into a lifelong intimacy with me. He had, without my being aware of it, disputed, explained, quarrelled, and petitioned on my behalf, and thereby roused himself to a veritable enthusiasm for Tannhauser.
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