Monday, 4 September 1876 (23 August)

There was no one left, not even Michel, and my father was asleep, when an old lady arrived in blue spectacles, a little hunchbacked, flat in front, with big feet, holding a small black parasol in her big hands. She asked for my father in French, announcing herself as the wife of the man who came two days ago to sell sheep, a French steward. My father refused to see her out of laziness; she insisted, and Pacha had to make the trip from the drawing room to Monsieur’s bed five times.

At last, deaf to all reason, the fury came into the library; Pacha followed her, trying to hold her back, but she, heeding nothing, went into the bedroom and, drawing aside the curtains of the alcove, found herself face to face with my father. Dumbfounded, he sat bolt upright and fixed her with bewildered eyes, whereupon she burst out laughing like a madwoman.

And this laughter ran like a trail of fire through the whole ground floor and was answered by a resounding echo, for in every room there was the Princess, or Pacha, or Paul, who had been holding themselves in for far too long. They burst into my father’s room, where he sat, still upright, holding his sides, while I was washing my face.

The night we rang the fire alarm, all the peasants came running with buckets, spades and axes, but we were already asleep. One peasant having dared to protest at the disorder, my father took offence and issued a lettre de cachet to have the seditious fellow locked up. That happened today in front of me; I laughed out loud, and the peasants who had informed on him smiled slyly.

In the night they called me from my room out onto the balcony and set off a little firework display for me. At every rocket a cry was heard on the hillside: it was Simon, the poor idiot. People insist he is not mad but makes a trade of it. In any case, the effect was fantastic: the moon, the fire, and a madman whose cries were repeated several times over by the echo.

I adore fireworks, and waterworks too, the kind known at Peterhof. Fire and water are the two passions of my eyes.