Sunday, 30 May 1875

After church I study. But let me not forget to recount what a trembling fright I caused everyone in the house: yesterday evening I remained in my study translating a fable of Phaedrus when Léonie comes up in a panic, Collignon and Dina following her.
They had been searching for me for an hour and had not thought to come upstairs, because the curtain is thick (I hung it for the plasterwork shadows) and one cannot see the light through it.
They thought I had been abducted by pirates, as in Girofle-Girofla. I laughed and then was cross.
Today a great procession departs from the church of Saint-Pierre — adjacent to the Sapogenikoffs' — but I go to the concert with my aunt, Aglaé and Euphrosine.
We encounter Audiffret who bows to us. I say who bows to us because it seems to me so extraordinary to know him: for five years I have seen him, and for five months I have spoken of him — it seems strange to me to actually know this man; I cannot get over it.
When I have observed a person for a long time, they seem to me impossible to actually know.
At the concert, he arrives behind us, gets down and comes near our carriage. I find him a little better — he does not have that awful straw hat that disfigures him; but his conversation is that of a schoolboy: little thing, roll, tumble down, and so on. But he is a nice fellow and he has beautiful eyes.
[Written across the page: All this being new — I had just grown up, my first long skirts, and so on.]
He is introduced to the Sapogenikoffs, who blush and fall silent. The whole time Girofla remains near us, then asks if we are going to the café and begs us to go:
— Why, Monsieur, asks my aunt.
— Because if you go there I shall rush there for the pleasure of conversing with you ladies a little longer.
Then in the middle of the conversation:
— You are blushing, Mademoiselle — what passed by? And he turns and looks, then again:
— It is Galula who has just passed.
— Not at all, Monsieur — it is you who are blushing; oh, look at you, how red you are!
— Pay no attention, Mademoiselle — I blush very often and for nothing at all.
— Like a young girl.
As we were leaving:
— So you will be at the theater this evening?
— Yes, said I.
At the café we are with Mme Angel, M. Bihovetz and others, and Mistigri (Girofla) with his rabble at another table.
We see him again at the theater — he is in a box opposite, making a rampart of Danis's body and two others, and from there staring through his opera glasses like a madman, thinking I could not see him.
[Written across the page: Mistake — he was doing it on purpose.]
At the end of Séraphine, drama in five acts, the door opens and Galula appears — before seeing who had entered, I turned quickly towards the box opposite, but the hero was in his place. Two seconds later he enters as well, and these two remain for an hour or more. The fellow recounts his bets with Prodgers and speaks ill of a great many people. Let us be prudent.
We are in our usual stage box — the same one that Gioia had in the days when she was with Audiffret.
I have had the anteroom of the box lit up, as it was then. One knows that I claim to resemble this — this... let us say goddess.
Galula had a dejected air — no, he had the air of something else.