(Grey dress, hair braided and fastened with a small comb, Ostend hat — good.)

I get into the carriage with my aunt and we go running about Nice — to Ade for ruffles, to several upholsterers for cretonne for Dina's room, to Visconti, where I subscribed to the Morning Post, for it is now ten months since the Duke of Hamilton married and that paper covers everything. I bought "The Women of the Bible," and the works of Byron and Shakespeare, and "Don Quixote," which I have not yet read. Afterwards we were at Laussel, who gives me the same hours as last year.

Tomorrow I shall draw up a plan of studies, and Monday I shall summon all those rascals of tutors to fix their days and hours.

We saw little Skariatine and a few Nice folk: Jeanne and several other local property owners.

I was forgetting the grey rabble in straw hats — Zasedsky, the dark Rodionoff, and other dregs — who are all and always in grey and walk about invariably with a cane in their hands crossed behind their backs. Some wear pince-nez and they always look as if they are discoursing on affairs of state.

We have asked Biasini to come tomorrow with the ironworker, for it is high time to order the gate. Our villa resembles Strasbourg after the bombardment — these stones from the demolished terraces and that hole [Crossed out: in the co] that serves as an entrance are of a pitiful effect.

I go down for tea and we talk about Dumas pere. Georges, Paul, and I recall the Musketeers and his Louis XIV and so forth. I used to detest Dumas pere, having read some works by his son, but now I love him.

Every evening my aunt attends my bedtime and sits on a box (for there is no furniture in my room) while I write, watches me get into bed, kisses me, checks the mosquito net carefully so that I am not bitten, kisses me, blows out the candles, and goes.