Just a word to thank you--so inadequately--for everything. Your letter of the 1st infinitely appeals to me, and the 3d vol. of the amazing Vladimir (amazing for _acharnement_ over her subject) has rejoiced my heart the more that I had quite given up expecting it. The two first vols. had long ago deeply held me--but I had at last had to suppose them but a colossal fragment. Fortunately the whole thing proves less fragmentary _than_ colossal, and our dear old George _ressort_ more and more prodigious the nearer one gets to her. The passages you marked contribute indeed _most_ to this ineffable effect--and the long letter to sweet Solange is surely one of the rarest fruits of the human intelligence, one of the great things of literature. And what a value it all gets from our memory of that wondrous day when we explored the very scene where they pigged so thrillingly together. What a crew, what _moeurs_, what habits, what conditions and relations every way--and what an altogether mighty and marvellous George!--not diminished by all the greasiness and smelliness in which she made herself (and _so_ many other persons!) at home. Poor gentlemanly, crucified Chop!--not naturally at home in grease--but having been originally _pulled_ in--and floundering there at last to extinction! _Ce qui depasse_, however--and it makes the last word about dear old G. really--is her overwhelming _glibness_, as exemplified, e.g., in her long letter to Gryzmala (or whatever his name,) the one to the first page or two of which your pencil-marks refer me, and in which she "posts" him, as they say at Stockbridge, as to all her _amours_. To have such a flow of remark on that subject, and everything connected with it, at her command helps somehow to make one feel that Providence laid up for the French such a store of remark, in advance and, as it were, should the worst befall, that their conduct and _moeurs_, coming _after_, had positively to justify and do honour to the whole collection of formulae, phrases and, as I say, glibnesses--so that as there were at any rate such things there for them to inevitably _say_, why not simply _do_ all the things that would give them a _rapport_ and a sense? The things _we_, poor disinherited race, do, we have to do so dimly and sceptically, without the sense of any such beautiful _cadres_ awaiting us--and therefore poorly and going but half--or a tenth--of the way. It makes a difference when you have to invent your suggestions and glosses all after the fact: you do it so miserably compared with Providence--especially Providence aided by the French language: which by the way convinces me that Providence thinks and _really_ expresses itself only in French, the language of gallantry. It will be a joy when we can next converse on these and cognate themes--I know of no such link of true interchange as a community of interest in dear old George.