But I understand, now--everything--and, bitter to me as the truth is, I must show you plainly that I know all of it, nor can I rest until I do show you.

I want you to answer this letter--though I must not see you again for a long time--and in your answer you must set me right if I am anywhere mistaken in what I have learned.
"At first, and until after the second time we met, I did not believe in your heart, though I did in your mind and humor.

Even since then, there have come strange, small, inexplicable mistrustings of you, but now I throw them all away and trust you wholly, Monsieur Citizen Georges Meilbac!--I shall always think of you in those impossible garnishments of my poor great-uncle, and I persuade myself that he must have been a little like you.
"I trust you because I have heard the story of your profound goodness.
The first reason for my father's dislike was your belief in freedom as the right of all men.

Ah, it is not your pretty exaggerations and flatteries (I laugh at them!) that speak for you, but your career, itself, and the brave things you have done.

My father's dislike flared into hatred because you worsted him when he discovered that he could not successfully defend the wrong against you and fell back upon sheer insult.
"He is a man whom I do not know--strange as that seems as I write it.
It is only to you, who have taught me so much, that I could write it.