— You will ruin yourself, my aunt was saying to me, you are ruining yourself.

— I will ruin myself, I cried — only I don't want that. Why live, if it is to live as I do? You all think I can be kept in reserve like Dina until the age of twenty. You must be joking! You all promised that when I had grown up there would be everything — well, I have grown up now! And there is nothing. Listen to what I am telling you now, and listen because I give you my word I am not joking.

I shall wait until next winter; if by winter nothing is better — it is very simply done — up there there is arsenic and excellent cyanide; one need only touch the tongue and it is all over. I am not joking — I have had enough of everything. They all say they love me. Idiots, egoists, accursed demons! For a long time still, already in bed with the lights out, I murmur: egoists, idiots, demons.

The truth is I am weary of all these miseries. I feel myself dying — morally, for physically, God be thanked, I am in good health, white and fresh.

Today the garden party takes place in the garden of our neighbour Kram. Michel Botkine has lunched with us. I go to this party (white dress, straw hat, good). It is very charming but I am sad. One of the Durand girls passes and greets me; I ask her where her sister Lucie is. Lucie is in Rome with the Lewins.

I asked because it was said that Lucie was marrying Gambard — that moneybag, that so-called patron of the arts, that boor, that ill-bred man.

I come home for my Latin lesson and go out again afterwards to take a box at the Théâtre Français. The Prince of Wales will be there and has requested Madame l'Archiduc.^[Madame l'Archiduc (1874), an operetta by Jacques Offenbach.*] I had also reserved a box at the opera — the children will go there. Those children — I am glad to go without them.

(Straw-coloured dress, straw hat, very good.) I am truly most gracefully dressed. Nadia and Dina come too. Towards the end of the first act the Prince enters, and I flush with pleasure. He takes his seat between two ladies, both in black — mother and daughter — then several gentlemen with Jarochewsky in their box to one side. When one thinks of the fortune of that little Pole! A nobody even in Nice. The Prince meets him at a Paris club, notices him, loses a hundred thousand francs to him, and becomes so taken with him that he brings him to London.

This evening he is with him — in the intervals he goes out and smokes with that little wretch, treats him as a friend. And so the Prince will become a king and Jarochewsky will have a brilliant position at his court. To be a king's friend is no small thing.

So there are fortunate people like that! And why does God send me nothing of the sort? Yes, but that Pole is a man — he goes to the club, he moves in society, while I, wretched creature that I am, am shut up worse than in a prison, more hidden than in a sérail!

The Prince of Wales has charming manners; one cannot say he is handsome. He is of less than average height, rather stout; he has a fairly fine oval face, grey eyes, keen eyes,^[In English in the original.] a slightly hooked aquiline nose, a short blond beard, and as for hair — oh, the hair — that is what he lacks; he has little, very little. He has a high forehead, a few hairs above it which he manages to part; then there is a desert, and at the back more hair, fairly thick. I remember seeing him at Baden-Baden in 1872 — he was much less bald then. It has been a most agreeable evening. An amusing play and a future king! A few minutes after sitting down he raised his opera glasses and trained them on me. At first I thought he was looking at something beside me — but fixing my eyes on his glasses, I satisfied myself that they were indeed directed at me.