Thursday, 31 August 1876 (19 August)

Paul, quite crestfallen, came to tell me that Papa did not want us to go and eat in the forest.

I slipped on a dressing gown and went to tell him that we would go. Three minutes later he was in my room.

“Well,” I said, “all this is badly arranged; if it were for someone else it would be different. It is really shabby!” And I went into my bedroom. I bathed and half finished dressing, while my father was still waiting in my sitting room.

“So,” he said, “you think it is shabby?”

“Why, yes.”

After a heap of rather comical misunderstandings we set off. And I was in excellent spirits, against all expectation. The fact is that Gritz is as simple as on the first day, and those strained, disagreeable relations exist no longer.

We were served in the forest just as at home. Everyone was hungry; we ate with a hearty appetite while making merry at Michel’s expense. For it was he who was to organise the outing, but this morning he shamefully disowned it, and the provisions came from Gavronzi.

Then we stretched out on a large rug in the shade of the trees... The gentlemen played cards, so that willy-nilly I had to keep company with Miloradovitch, who did nothing but express a wish to fall asleep, saying that I wanted to as well.

“What, Miloradovitch!” cried my father, with that half-mocking, half-serious air that is so disconcerting. “You want to sleep!”

“Marie, what is this story you are telling Grigori Ivovitch? It must be very amusing, but in your place I would not talk.”

It was a real blow for the poor devil, but my attention was drawn for the moment to the sufferings of Kapitan, who was struggling under the weight of Paul and Michel, sitting calmly on his shoulders and his backside and playing cards on his back. Only in Russia do you find Kapitans. I was dying of laughter watching the tricks they played on him, for to me it was an entirely new spectacle.

I came back in a household cart, alone with my father. We talked about everything that interests me, and he told me many very sound things about Miloradovitch. My father and I get on well.

At home I found newspapers and letters from Maman. She passes on to me the compliments of Cassagnac, which were passed on to her by Mouzay.

The Cardinal is at death’s door. And I loudly announced his death, relying on the testimony of my games of patience.

I was cheerful and talked enough for everyone, and Gritz was natural and pleasant.

We set off a few rockets and had a Jew tell us nonsense. The Jew in Russia is a creature halfway between the dog and the monkey¹. Jews can do anything and are used for everything. People borrow money from them, beat them, make them drunk, entrust business to them, amuse themselves with them.

When Gritz had gone and the others had gone to bed, I went to write in my father’s rooms, and when I had finished I asked him whether he was asleep; he answered no, so I went into his bedroom and little by little I talked to him about everything: about business, about the lawsuit, explaining the truth to him, about money, about my sorrows, about the Tutcheffs, whom I boldly accused, about Georges, whom I cursed without pity. And, growing excited, growing tender, growing indignant, I laughed, I wept, and I came out intoxicated by the impression I had made on my father.

Instead of hostility and distrust towards my family, he shows only... that is to say, he would open his mouth, but I anticipated and explained so well what he was going to say that he said something quite different, that is to say, that I was amazed and delighted. And why was I persuasive? Because I was imbued with what I was saying. There is the source of true eloquence!

My father spoke to me of my family’s inaction.

“For after all,” he said, “if they love you as you say, they ought to come here and get rid of all this filth; it would be so easy, it would not even come out in public; I would arrange it quietly and that would be the end of it.”

Here he was speaking of an absurd affair of the Babanine brothers in which Maman and my aunt were incomprehensibly mixed up. A laughable affair.

“As for the other,” he went on, “it is a lawsuit about money.”

“Yes.”

“But they would do well to end it. For all this casts a shadow on you. And listen to me carefully: I see that you are worthy of another life than the one you lead.”

I should think so!

When I went back to my room I was so overwrought that I would have spent the night weeping with emotion if Amalia had not started chattering, which turned my thoughts in another direction.

One must always cut short a mood; it avoids scenes, tears, sprawlings on the floor.

And I hate it when I make scenes like that.

Poor Gritz! Now I pity him. He left a little unwell.

We were having tea, and he came and made himself attentive to me, whereas I, on the contrary, treated him with that “careless and indifferently amiable air that I shall henceforth adopt towards all young men,” that common mass who must be kept at a distance.

“Just mind you do not tell him anything,” my father cried over his cards, “or he will fall asleep. The truth is, I am a little vexed: people fall asleep while my daughter is talking.”

“It was you, it was you,” cried Gritz, “who said that! Now it is all over, mademoiselle! Constantin Pavlovitch will tell everyone, and it will be talked about in Poltava, it will become an anecdote! When it is not true, when I never even dreamed of sleeping! My God!”

I reassured him, but laughing all the while. He does not amuse me, this boy; he has a speech defect that trips up his words.

But you understand that yesterday’s unspoken misunderstanding was disagreeable. It is gone, and I have become natural and cheerful again.

To what should these two strange days be attributed? Hm... very well, like my father, let us leave it.

God never abandons those who trust in Him.