Thursday, 30 October 1873

At lunch Papa again permitted himself dreadful impertinences, and I go straight to Maman and tell her, choking and stifled with rage, that I cannot -- I will not -- endure him any longer!
Naturally the whole Areopagus -- the whole pack of hounds -- comes running and starts making scenes. I shall defend myself with all my strength, and I let myself be carried away a little. May God forgive me -- but I was so outraged! I was in such a fury.
I must not let myself go; I must leave when the donkeys bray. But then I should have to leave forever and never appear! Oh, my God, tell me what I must do, and preserve me against the detestable attacks of this old man, for he outrages me and drives me out of my mind.
I do not get over it all day, and I shall not get over it for a long time.
I go out with Bete, but there is not a soul on the promenade or in the streets. It is detestable when there is no one. We eat ice cream at the London House. I talked without stopping the whole time, and always about Orphee, La Belle Helene, La Grande-Duchesse, and Le Chateau a Toto. I ended by talking nonsense and repeating the same words two, three times.
I styled Paul's hair without a parting, the hair in the Glaucus manner as I call this style, for it seems to me that Glaucus wore his hair so. Paul comes back and tells me Walitsky says I styled him like Hamilton, since Hamilton never has his hair done.
I wanted to style it like the Duke's, but I do not remember whether he parted his hair.
[Written across the page: I had never seen him without a hat.]
Several times during the day, while I was complaining (all day long) about Papa, Walitsky brought a smile to my lips by speaking of Hamilton. Although he is dead to me, I love him and think of him. Even when someone dies one cannot forget the dead, and Hamilton lives -- he is married, he is happy, content. Can I then forget him? My whole future was in him; I am still in the clouds; everything has become uncertain; I have no prayer to God. Half of the Duke, in the photograph from the shooting event, is in my blotter, and I examine it every evening, and I am nearly certain it is indeed him... I looked at it just now, and I am sure it is he.
[Annotation: 1875. It is true -- everything is uncertain; I drift and grieve to this day.]
How good God is: never would I have thought of the happiness of having his portrait, and there, all at once, without my asking or making any effort to obtain it, He gives it to me.
Just now I saw him, as on the day of the races, and my heart leaps and beats at this moment. How stupid I am. How unhappy I am.
[Annotation: 1875. I am thinking of it now.]
Not only do I love him, but he pleases me enormously. He is charming, perfect. Never in the world will anyone please me as he does. I shall love, no doubt, but no one will please me as he does. His manners, his gait, his height, his complexion, his gaze, the expression of his face, that je ne sais quoi about him that drives me mad -- something in his features near the nose, the eyes, the mouth. His way of dressing, of sitting in his carriage, of watching at the races and the shooting.
Everything, in a word -- I adore everything in him. He is perfect, and I say it in cold blood, for I am calm and nothing excites me.
I do not know why, but it seems to me he was meant to be mine, and when Maman spoke of him, I was in seventh heaven.

Notes

In English in the original.