in his heart, though his face, when in
repose, was like the conventional pictures of Christ. His fascinations
destroyed the peace of many a woman; and it was only after many years
of self-indulgence that he married the faithful Mathilde Mirat in what
he termed a "conscience marriage." Soon after he went to his
"mattress-grave," as he called it, a hopeless paralytic.

To Heine came Marx and his beautiful bride. One may speculate as to
Jenny's estimate of her husband. Since his boyhood, she had not seen
him very much. At that time he was a merry, light-hearted youth, a
jovial comrade, and one of whom any girl would be proud. But since his
long stay in Berlin, and his absorption in the theories of men like
Engels and Bauer, he had become a very different sort of man, at least
to her.

Groping, lost in brown studies, dreamy, at times morose, he was by no
means a sympathetic and congenial husband for a high-bred, spirited
girl, such as Jenny von Westphalen. His natural drift was toward a
beer-garden, a group of frowsy followers, the reek of vile tobacco, and
the smell of sour beer. One cannot but think that his beautiful wife
must have been repelled by this, though with her constant nature she
still loved him.

In Heinrich Heine she found a spirit that seemed akin to hers. Mr.
Spargo says--and in what he says one must read a great deal between the
lines:

The admiration of Jenny Marx for the poet was even more ardent than
that of her husband. He fascinated her because, as she said, he was "so
modern," while Heine was drawn to her because she was "so sympathetic."

It must be that Heine held the heart of this beautiful woman in his
hand. He knew so well the art of fascination; he knew just how to
supply the void which Marx had left. The two were indeed affinities in
heart and soul; yet for once the cynical poet stayed his hand, and said
no word that would have been disloyal to his friend. Jenny loved him
with a love that might have blazed into a lasting flame; but
fortunately there appeared a special providence to save her from
herself. The French government, at the request of the King of Prussia,
banished Marx from its dominions; and from that day until he had become
an old man he was a wanderer and an exile, with few friends and little
money, sustained by nothing but Jenny's fidelity and by his infinite
faith in a cause that crushed him to the earth.

There is a curious parallel between the life of Marx and that of