Friday, 2 April

My aunt too is in Cannes, so that, all alone am I (white dress), I go for a walk with Papa; then Sabatini comes and I go out with her.
Olga dines here, my aunt comes home, Pâris and Marie arrive and we go to the Théâtre Français: La Fille du Balland, a benefit for Jarousseau, the house lit as bright as day. The first face I catch sight of is Terffidua’s.
— Girofla is here, I say.
— Girofla is here, Marie repeats.
— Girofla is here, says Olga. — Oh, bah! I say, sitting down. Fie on the Girofla! Can one look at anyone after the Prince of Wales? Fie, Girofla, fie, Girofla, fie, Girofla. He was good-looking, but such a peasant.
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At that instant he took up his opera glass and levelled it at me for the first time in a hundred years. I looked straight into the glass with an air of astonishment, for a moment only, then pretended not to see him. Only, as the lamps dazzled me, I kept hidden behind my immense Japanese fan, through which I saw Terffidua looking at me from time to time. Galula leaves the stalls; I say to myself, he is coming to us and is going to present Audiffret. And indeed he comes in and stops in the middle of the (continued in the next book).
Inserted itemNote de Marie à la fin du Livre 30
gown of cloth of silver with pink piping, aprons and panels of black velvet trimmed with gold and silver lace. The bodices cut low in the Bresse fashion, with cuffs and collars in their style of very fine yellow linen, the whole edged with Venetian point. The hat of black velvet covered with flame-coloured, pink and white plumes. Headdress of a Bresse peasant woman, with black hair and little curls of flame-coloured varnish embroidered with silver (costume for a masquerade with Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle de Villeroy and Mademoiselle de Gordon.
(Volume IV, continued from p. 360) box, like a man about to announce something. I am ashamed to confess that my heart began to beat — it began to beat because I thought I had guessed rightly, and because that creature ought to have been introduced to us long ago, and also because it was something new. Good evening, Madame, Mademoiselle, he says:
— Sit down, Monsieur, says my aunt. He sits down and begins to talk about the Durands, and so on; I wait, I wait, I grow impatient — but nothing; he stays a few minutes longer and leaves just as he came.
Well, I never!

Notes

Marie’s title is French: La Fille du Balland (“The Daughter of Balland”). ↩
In Italian in the original: a giorno. ↩