1. Theo had complied with Vincent’s request in letter 671 to send his allowance early.

2. The rent was undoubtedly collected by Bernard Soulè, the owner’s agent. See letter 602, n. 19.

3. See letter 654, n. 2, for the lease expiry date.

a. To be understood as: ‘nog veel liever’ (much rather).

4. Van Gogh must have got the saying ‘you have to hack each step out of the ice’ from chapter 10 of Daudet’s Tartarin sur les Alpes (see Daudet 1986-1994, vol. 3, p. 640).

5. Theo’s visit to Siegfried Bing’s art gallery would have been to do with the ‘stock’ of prints Vincent had there. See letter 637, n. 5.

b. Read: ‘habiter chez’.

6. Vincent had previously debated the use of more coarsely ground paint; see letter 668.

7. The three volumes of Balzac that Van Gogh sent probably included the novel César Birotteau (1837), which he had promised to send Theo; see letter 636, n. 8.

8. Alphonse Daudet L’immortel – Moeurs parisiennes, which had appeared in book form two months earlier, satirizes the academic world with its untalented people. The book is indeed not very comforting: Astier-Réhu, the central character, commits suicide.

9. Gustave Aimard, who travelled widely, wrote more than a hundred novels of adventure and travel that were very popular in their day, including Les trappeurs de l’Arkansas (1858) and La loi de lynch (1859). Van Gogh may have come up with the name by way of Tartarin, the self-styled lion hunter in Daudet’s eponymous novels, who is a great fan of Aimard’s tales.

10. For Daudet’s Tartarin de Tarascon and Tartarin sur les Alpes see letter 583, n. 9.