Monday, 23 March 1874

I come every morning to Maman and my aunt to prepare our departure from Nice.
Everyone is still here, and if Lambertye has left it makes no difference. Maman, as a joke you talk nonsense; I do not know Lambertye.
I refuse my grey costume, paying half.
It is cool, especially when I go out (blue dress, hair on the nape and down my back -- good). Mlle Collignon is with us, Machenka and me, but we leave her at the port.
A few drops of rain fall -- like a wretched hothouse plant that is watered and rises up again, I come back to life.
The air keeps its freshness; there are a few people on the Promenade. Fedus, bright as the spring, is with the hunchback. He does not laugh so much but looks more decorously. Then we see Wittgenstein with his wife in a very fine toilette. I turned away, for I did not want that woman to see me blush.
We met them three times. It is a misfortune to blush thus for every passer-by. If only Wittgenstein were alone -- but when he is with his wife I am sure to turn red. She strikes me as being very ill, ill. When she walks, it seems to me she suffers and that one movement too many would put her on the ground.
This morning the gloves arrived and fit me very well. I am in despair over my grey costume. Now I am left without a dress; all that happens is for the best -- that dress would have been a sort of imitation of the Galves, and I do not wish to imitate.
I am having one made in ecru foulard, almost white.
At dinner Maman, as if to persuade me to stay in Nice, says laughing:
-- Here, Lambertye of the leather trousers has not left -- I saw him today and he is staying another month and a half.
This time I pretended to be angry:
-- Maman, please, stop with Lambertye -- I do not know Lambertye, but with these stupid jokes everyone is given the right to joke, and it ends with my blushing on account of every servant! I must grimace for fear of blushing; I am afraid, on sitting down to dinner, of blushing at the name of any servant!
This is perfectly true.
I am afraid to enter the room where everyone is for fear of blushing. It is a true misfortune.
I shall try, in falling asleep, to invent a dress.
[In the margin: As I was going to wind up my alarm clock, I find it is broken. The hands fall off. I took the old one and it took me half an hour to arrange, set the alarm, verify. I have three before me. I do not know if I shall be woken tomorrow.]

Notes

In English in the original.