--but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed)
in paragraph eleven of your Reply.--[So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not
like M. Paul Bourget's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great
French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humorist
we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking
a revenge?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.]

For example:
See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him:

"I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because
whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can
always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather
was."

Hear the answer:

"I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too;
because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't
find out who his father was."

The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery.
I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a
gratuitous charge of immorality hurled at the French women--a remark
unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman,
a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark
Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it
is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to
you.