Yesterday — yesterday

I had miscalculated, and here I am without dresses: there is only the white woollen dress, the things from Laferrière are finished,¹ and the blue and gold dress has a botched bodice. I am in despair and beg my aunt to go to Paris — at every moment I say: Let us go to Paris, and to every question I answer with those three words. Moreover I never cease lamenting this want of dresses. Truly, when I am not properly dressed I am the most disagreeable of creatures, to others and to myself. I hope I shall go — it is not my aunt who objects, it is the money, that cursed money.

I do as I please — the idea comes to me to go to Paris to buy dresses, and they consent. I do not know whether it is a misfortune or a blessing that I am mistress here; I depend on no one, and when I meet with any resistance it comes from money, always money, alas! Happy those who have it — say what you will, money makes a great part of happiness. It is better to be unhappy with gold than without it, and it is those who have none, or who speak ill of it — as Princess Nadine Galitzine used to say

That evening at the opera — L'Italiana in Algeria² — the same dress as the other night, my hair: very good. I am in good humour and enjoy myself, though there is almost no one of standing — only Count Arnim, the one from last year, Moreno with his family, and four other Spaniards. He came to our box and drove Galula away by his presence. Dina says he did well!

Dear Moreno opens with compliments: that in his box they had said I was ethereal as a cloud, all in white — then look at those arms; how rounded she is, white, fair — it is his wife who says all this. Audiffret has vanished — where the devil is he? La Vigier is wearing a red satin dress with an œil-de-bœuf³ at the front, through which one saw things one is not accustomed to see in public; and Zibine, the old lecher, had the effrontery to lean out of the loathsome Schestakoff's box and stare closely and smile. The poor vicomtesse blushed and covered herself with her fan. Barbarians! Idiots! Asses! Because she dresses as people dressed in former times — like the old portraits — these barbarians, these ignoramuses, dare such things; and I shot indignant glances at Zibine, for he had presumed to insult a woman who was with another woman. Ah, if I were a man I would box his ears.

How happy I am to be well formed — as long as I have so fine a body I shall never be bored; and then the hair — with these one can always find amusement. Who will possess all these fine things. I should be devastated if it were some cad, but I trust it will not be.

[Two lines cancelled]

Truly beautiful things must not remain hidden but must be admired by all. Honni soit qui mal y pense.⁴ If I do not change my mind I shall have my statue made in time. I should want it in ivory and gold, like that of Minerva in the Parthenon⁵ — in that way it would be preserved as a work of art and my name attached to it.