Sunday, 28 March 1875
I go to church with Dina (white dress, straw hat, good). The Howards were dying of jealousy — I was pretty, I know it. To the music with Marie and Olga, but yesterday's magic does not repeat itself. We see Girofla often; Marie makes a fuss over him and we laugh about it, then to the café again, where there is only the handsome Italian — not my Italian, another one — who has something in his eyes that pleases me. He stays gazing at me for a few minutes, then leaves. Shortly afterwards the buia compagnia^[Italian: "dark company" — Marie's ironic nickname for the group of young men.] from yesterday arrives and takes up position opposite us. There is a Russian proverb that says: where there are no fish, a crayfish passes for a fish — and the arrival of this fine youth, as I was saying, revives us and delights me enormously. Girofla pleases me today, and considerably, so that I am as pleased as can be and furious — let us add, furious, very furious. A peasant like that, who does not even have the merit of loving me — I say this because if he were as interested in me as I am in him, he would have had himself introduced long since. But introduced by whom? Oh, by Galula, by Satan, by anyone at all!# Dimanche, 28 mars 1875. Je vais à l'église avec Dina...
When one wishes — fie! how wretched I am, making excuses for this lazybones! I thought of nothing else when I saw him seated at the café, saying aloud that he could eat nothing at that hour.
Why come at all, then? To drink, by God — that is plain enough, and not to look at us! I could as well have said: to look at me. But no — that is foolish. The fact is that this fancy for Girofla disposes me wonderfully to dream of the Duke. The Italian I mentioned before has eyes somewhat like Hamilton's. These two days past I am constantly with him — the Duke; I do not know whether others have the same experience as I. For two days Hamilton has been with me everywhere — I forget everyone, I fall silent or laugh mechanically, all because I am with him; I have whole silent conversations with him.
I am so happy these two days because he is with me. I have forgotten everything, all my troubles, because I am in excellent company — and through the bursts of laughter from Marie and Olga and the ruddy face of the little peasant and the grey eyes of the Italian, I always see the same thing, or rather the same person.
Having dressed my hair beautifully and changed again — the grey dress for the white — I go to the Théâtre Français. Kean, by Dumas.^[Alexandre Dumas père's play Kean (1836), about the life of the English actor Edmund Kean (1787-1833).] It is Easter here and the house is full but not a soul.
How I resent the peasant for not being there.
I was still with him, and when Helena comes into Kean's dressing room and he falls to his knees and kisses her hands, I close my eyes — it is no longer Kean and Helena I see, but the Duke and me. It is madness, but so it is. I am eager to get home, to go to bed and think at my leisure. This really is a double existence, as in J. Balsamo.^[Joseph Balsamo (1846-48) by Alexandre Dumas père — a novel about the double life of the historical swindler Cagliostro.*] In my dreams I have just married him, and this evening we are to leave Paris on a private train. In reality, I am coming back from the café and going to the theatre. I can read nothing now except my diary — I am at Book X, on the eve of the day when Elder said to me:
— The duke of Hamilton is going to mary the daughter of the Duke of Manchester.^[In English in the original. "Mary" is Marie's (or Elder's) spelling of "marry."]
After which words I shall tremble so violently.