Wednesday, 19 April 1876

See the disadvantage of my position. Antonelli without me has his club, society, his friends — everything, in a word, except me. Whereas I, without Antonelli, have nothing.

For him I am only a luxury pastime; for me he was everything — he made me forget our horrible position, and I did not think of it and occupied myself only with him, too happy to escape.

Whatever I become, I bequeath my journal to the public. All the books one reads are inventions — the situations in them are forced, the characters false. Whereas this is the photograph of an entire life. Ah! you will say, but this photograph is tedious while inventions are entertaining! If you say that you give a very poor notion of your intelligence. I offer you here what has never yet been seen. All memoirs, all journals, all these letters one publishes, are nothing but painted inventions designed to deceive the world.¹

[Annotation: As if the tone here were not forced, and as if everything were not of a wearisome exaggeration and romanticism! 1881]²

I have no interest in deceiving — I have no political acts to conceal, no criminal relations to hide; no one cares whether I love or do not love, whether I weep or whether I laugh. My greatest concern is to express myself as exactly as possible. I have no illusions about my style or my spelling.

I write letters without errors, but in the midst of this ocean of words I doubtless let many slip. I also make errors in French. I am a foreigner — but ask me to express myself in my own language, and I would perhaps do it even worse.

But it is not to say all that that I opened the notebook. It is to say that it is not yet noon, that I am more than ever given over to my tormenting thoughts, that my breast is heavy, and that I would gladly howl.

Besides, this is my natural state, as long as I have no Pietro to distract me from my constant unhappiness. That is why I cling to him so.

The sky is grey; the Chiaia is traversed only by cabs and dirty pedestrians; those stupid trees planted between the promenade and the sea prevent one from seeing it. In Nice on the Promenade des Anglais one has on one side the villas and on the other the sea, which breaks on the pebbles unobstructed. Here one has houses on one side and on the other a kind of garden that runs the length of the street and separates it from the sea — which is itself separated from the garden by a fairly large stretch of barren ground covered in building rubble, offering a spectacle of truly desolating sadness. Arriving at the square that terminates the Chiaia — planted with pretty shrubs — one feels far better, and that spot is pretty. Further on one enters the quay: houses on the left, the sea on the right — but the sea stopped by a balustrated wall lined with stalls of oyster-sellers and shellfish-dealers; then come the iron gates of the port itself. But that is no longer the sea — it is a dirty place, entirely obstructed by a heap of ugly things.

Grey weather always makes me a little sad — but here, but today, it oppresses me. This deathly silence in our hotel apartment; this irritating noise of cabs and bell-hung carts outside; this grey sky; this wind stirring the curtains!

Ah! I am very wretched, and I must blame neither the sky nor the sea but the earth. This disappointment concerning Pietro — whom I always thought so sincere and so passionate, despite my doubts... Sincerity and passion transformed into a lie and cowardly submission!

After all, my life is only beginning — why cry out so much over a disappointment, over a lie! I shall see so many more.

Tomorrow evening we leave. There is not enough money — we must go. Is that not vexing?

The time has seemed long to me — and yet tomorrow it will barely have been eight days!

I would very much like to know since when his lordship Antonelli has been in Rome. I would like to know above all the truth! Was he removed by some ruse, or did he remove himself? If the latter were so, it would also mean that he had never said a single true word to me.

If he was removed by a ruse, once back he ought to have stirred himself a little more than this. But there is a third supposition. He has renounced me of his own accord. There — that would be charming.

Or perhaps he loves me — but since I do not love him he wishes to force himself to forget me. That is the most flattering supposition for my pride — and perhaps a fairly probable one.

Plowden will not fail to show him my photograph and have him read the PEACE TO YOU³.

In any case, so much the better. Ah! But I forgot something magnificent — as Foster used to say — which is that it was I who did not want him; it was I who always said no, and he will not think that I love him. There is a compensation — almost a joy.

A few more days and I shall be in Nice. This moment, so desired before, is quite indifferent to me now. I would not wish to delay it — solely because of my character, which is so contrary to postponements of any kind.

I am glad to have spent a few days in Florence last summer, and to have come to Naples this spring. I shall no longer have that aversion I have for every new city — if in future I have occasion to go to them.

That poor aunt, dying of boredom! She has never been so long alone, and her letters are pitiful to read. And Grand-papa! And the dogs and the Sapogenikoffs and Collignon and the monkeys!⁴

I believe Antonelli has been in Rome since Saturday. In that case he would only have been delayed by a week. Good — more mitigations and excuses. Besides, it is not to justify him — it is to calm myself.

Altamura displays and throws about too much money for me to trust him. One sees at once whether a man throws his money about from habit or to throw dust in one’s eyes.

I am so bored that I do not know what to do with myself, and La Comtesse de Salisbury⁵ is too serious a book to take my mind off things and hold my interest.

Canaries and parrots! I am just back from the promenade — it was brilliant. We had just turned in front of the balcony where the gentlemen were standing, Muliterno among them, and watched Altamura playing the clown on his horse, when Torlonia passed with a friend of Petruccio’s and raised his hat quite naturally — as if we were on the Corso or the Pincio.⁶ He had spotted Chocolat beside the coachman from a distance — but for me it was so unexpected, so unexpected... that I found it the most natural thing in the world. The gaiety rose from my heart to my head like the foam of a bottle of champagne. I went back in and stationed myself on the balcony half mad with joy — and then... what am I to Torlonia? Why this joy at the sight of a man who does not even look at me?... And little by little the foam subsided, and once more I saw the sad reality. I alone think of all these people — they do not concern themselves with me.

— I do not want to leave tomorrow! I exclaimed on coming in. And why stay? Certainly to see Torlonia is an immense pleasure — but this pleasure is accompanied by so many pains and so many humiliating thoughts that really it is enough to dash one’s head against the wall!!

Let us mention in passing that we visited the Royal Palace near the Teatro San Carlo.⁷ Doenhoff, having met us when Maman had already gone back, asked whether we were at home this evening. We are going to the theatre.

Dinner is served; I dine alone while the others go to the table d’hôte.

God — what sadness! Truly Torlonia is adorable — there is someone I would be mad about if he loved me!!

That moment of happiness has hurt me — this Torlonia has humiliated me, I do not know why.

There are many Roman faces here — one would think it the Corso.

I do not want to stay anywhere — I want to rush headlong to Russia and return from it only when I am clean. One hour more and this life seems to me impossible. I do not know whether it is my imagination, but it seems to me that everyone is pointing at us, mocking, despising!

You understand what torture it is!

I shall not go to the theatre! Why go? To arouse curiosity — so that people ask who is that? — and so that they answer: I don’t know.

Ah! If they answered that, it would be too fortunate — but no: they will want to provide information gathered in scraps and stitched together to form a most abominable fabric!

Besides, it seems to me that everyone knows us. One must leave — nothing holds me here; I am good for nothing — not for myself, not for anyone; no one loves me, no one cares for me!

I hear Doenhoff, who has just come into the drawing room. The poor fool still hopes to obtain something from Maman. He might as well court a statue or a piece of furniture.

Ah! Pietro! believe me, if only I could, I would make you pay dearly for all the vexations you cause me! I really do not know what is the matter with me, but I pity myself!

The theatres begin very late here, at half past nine.

I am so weak and so sad, and if Pietro came in I... I would be glad.

We go with Doenhoff as far as the Hôtel du Louvre, where he is staying; then we continue on our way and arrive at the Frondo theatre in the middle of the first act of my dear Barber of Seville. We are on the right, the only side I like; the boxes here are large, handsome and comfortable, and between the armchairs there is a raised sofa hidden in the shadow. It was on this sofa that I sat at first, leaving Dina alone in front, with Maman in the second row.

Torlonia is opposite, in the Neapolitan club box;⁸ although I am in the shadow, I cannot look at him, for he has his glass trained on me.

— How I detest him, said Maman; I have always detested him.

— Whom, Maman?

— That young man.

I say nothing and stay quietly in my corner.

— There he goes already, she continues. No, he is only hiding.

Two seconds later there was a knock at the door and Chocolat announced Torlonia.

I was so astonished that I scarcely answered his apologies for his attire, and only a minute later asked him to sit down. He was not drunk — wait a moment: his but listen rings so agreeably in my ears that I am going to close my eyes for two minutes...

... There, let us go on now. He was not drunk, as I said, but on the contrary very sober, very proper and charming. He even said that it is a great misfortune when young girls are rich, for they cannot believe in the disinterestedness of those who court them; they always think it is for their money. This was said apropos of Mlle Mechtchersky, whom he has known since December but had not even greeted, and about whom he did not trouble himself in the least until the other day, when he talked with her and found her very agreeable.

Pietro has been in Rome for three days; the country air has done him good and he has grown fatter, but come now!⁹

Torlonia claims to have known us under the name of Appletcheieff; it was only the other day that Mlle Mechtchersky is supposed to have told him our real name. I wonder what they can have said about my unfortunate person.

— I walk into Spillmann’s and he asks me whether I am going to Naples. Why? Because these ladies are going to Naples. That is how I learned of it; I meant to come and pay my respects that same evening, but it was too late.

He always means to, and he never does.

No, but listen — I have nothing but those words in my head. He stayed a long time, but never long enough; he went away saying “until tomorrow at the races” just as Altamura came in. Doenhoff has made enquiries about this gentleman and was told, for certain, that Altamura is a very respectable and wealthy man. That reassures me a little.

So Torlonia went off to the club box, and I moved to the front, to be furiously ogled and stared at by the gentlemen opposite — three boxes of them, I think.

No, but listen. The devil — those words and that voice pursue me.

But soon he went away, and half an hour later I begged Maman to leave the theatre, where I was bored without him. Altamura saw us home.

— Oh! said Maman, I am sure they will marry him to the Mechtchersky girl.

— And why? I think that...

— Because, she interrupted, she will fall in love with him, she will want him, and since the match is a fine one on both sides, it will come about. Countess Kiseleff will manage the affair so well that the proposal will be made through the ambassadress. Oh! I am quite sure of it.

Maman knows that this gives me anything but pleasure, but she says it with a salutary intention, to prepare me for it.

One is never prepared for unpleasantness.

No doubt the Mechtchersky girl will fall in love with him — and who would not, especially if he shows himself a little attentive?

— No, tell me, Marie, Dina asks during supper, you... no, listen, one can suppose anything, can one not?

— Yes. And then?

— One can suppose the least probable things.

— No doubt.

— Well, if he asked for your hand, would you accept him? Answer me, and seriously.

— Truly and seriously, I tell you I would accept him at once.

— You say that because you think he will not ask you.

— Why no, I say it because it is the truth.

— And whom would you choose, him or Doenhoff?

— Him, of course.

— Oh!!

— It is the truth. Doenhoff is more serious, more important perhaps, but the mere idea of living in Prussia!... whereas I adore Italian life.

A fig for everyone. Torlonia said a few words to me in passing; he was almost rude in Rome, and here he deigned to spend half an hour or three quarters of an hour in my box, and I am wild about it.

Ah! how ugly it is to know for certain that he does not look at me, that I am nothing to him!