Tuesday, 9 March 1875

Is there to be nobody left, then, to amuse me? I am bored, and very much so. Allard came to dress our hair, Nadinka’s and mine; then we went out and went to his shop to look at an album of hairstyles of every age, from mythology down to our own day. I copied two hats and memorised a coiffure worn by one of Chilperic’s wives.

At the Opera, Dinorah (white dress, good); my hair is still holding up and becoming to me.

Galula comes and chatters and throws out two or three rather neatly turned compliments; he lists all my dresses and my hairstyles, which he seems to know as well as I do.

— Who is up there? asks my aunt.

— Mrs Prodgers.
— With whom?

— With M. Saëtone.
— And who else?..

— And a gentleman of no importance.

— Then who are the gentlemen of importance? I say.

— Ah! the gentlemen of importance, he says, looking at Audiffer’s box, occupied by the Lacroix, have gone out. I smile.

— And Mrs Prodgers’s mother-in-law?

— She has been in London for a long time.

I was dying to say that this was why the gentlemen of importance had gone out, but I held my tongue.

Danis stared at me from the stalls as in the early days, and I kept blushing.