'Of course it ["The Patrician"] isn't pure aesthetics (only Flaubert's "Salammbo" among novels is that) but even on that ground alone you have done a very fine thing.' Hence follow over a page of only slightly qualified praise for this work. 'I haven't told you half of what I thought about the book. While writing [the first time] I felt still a little "in the air" about it -- but after a second reading I felt so no longer.'