1876-11-29-30-12-01

Tuesday, 29 November 1876

What did I do today? I do not know... Ah, yes — Berthe came to lunch with me and I settled accounts with all my dressmakers. We were to leave this evening; de Daillens came and we amused ourselves, she and I, drawing a caricature of Paul de Cassagnac. That amusement exhausted, we did nothing more.

Wednesday, 30 November 1876

We went with de Daillens to look at our carriages, and in the very middle of the Champs-Élysées we met Count Merjeeswsky. He greeted me; I blushed and had the carriage stopped. Poor boy, he is just as yellow as ever.
— He always looks as though covered in insect powder, I said, as we drove on after agreeing to meet him at five this evening.
— Could it be for self-destruction? asked de Daillens. The little fellow arrived at five and accompanied us into the shops where I went in search of a belt buckle. I was in grey, as I had been at Spa; he remarked upon it. I spoke little and briefly — my grey dress and his mouth put me on edge. He said so much!...

Thursday, 1 December 1876

Yesterday at nine o'clock we left Paris. Maman with her thirty-six packages reduced me to despair. Those cries, those panics, those boxes — it is disgustingly bourgeois. Well.