Your letter found me to-day in full fever of work; I am lecturing here on Goethe, repeat each lecture twice and yet people wait in line for three quarters of an hour in the square before the University to get standing-room. It amuses me to study the greatest of the great before so many. I must stay here till the end of the year. But on the other side there is the unfortunate circumstance that--as I am informed--one of my old books, lately translated into Russian, has been condemned in Russia to be publicly _burnt_ as "irreligious." I already had to fear expulsion on account of my two last works on Poland and Russia; now I must try to set in motion all the influence I can command, in order to obtain permission to lecture in Russia this winter. To make matters worse, nearly all letters to and from me are now confiscated. There is great anxiety since the disaster at Borki. It was just the same shortly after the famous attempts. Every letter was snapped up. It gives me lively satisfaction to see that you have again got through so much. Believe me, I spread your propaganda wherever I can. So late as last week I earnestly recommended Henrik Ibsen to study your works. With him too you have some kinship, even if it is a very distant kinship. Great and strong and unamiable, but yet _worthy_ of love, is this singular person. Strindberg will be glad to hear of your appreciation. I do not know the French translation you mention; but they say here that all the best things in _Giftas_ (_Mariés_) have been left out, especially the witty polemic against Ibsen. But read his drama _Père_; there is a great scene in it. I am sure he would gladly send it you. But I see him so seldom; he is so shy on account of an extremely unhappy marriage. Imagine it, he abhors his wife _intellectually_ and cannot get away from her _physically_. He is a monogamous misogynist! It seems curious to me that the polemical trait is still so strong in you. In my early days I was passionately polemical; now I can only expound; silence is my only weapon of offence. I should as soon think of attacking Christianity as of writing a pamphlet against werewolves, I mean against the belief in werewolves. But I see we understand one another. I too _love_ Pascal. But even as a young man I was _for_ the Jesuits against Pascal (in the _Provinciales_). The worldly-wise, they were right, of course; he did not understand them; but they understood him and--what a master-stroke of impudence and sagacity!--they themselves published his _Provinciales_ with notes. The best edition is that of the Jesuits. Luther against the Pope, there we have the same collision. Victor Hugo in the preface to the _Feuilles d'Automne_ has this fine saying: _On convoque la diète de Worms mais on peint la chapelle Sixtine. Il y a Luther, mais il y a Michel-Ange ... et remarquons en passant que Luther est dans les vieilleries qui croulent autour de nous et que Michel-Ange n'y est pas._