# Friday, 15 December 1876

We went to the Skating-rink; Mme Anitchkoff was, for once, well dressed — for her. There were few people there. Mme Souvoroff came up to me, most amiable, while Maman chatted with her sister Mme Kondareff, the ugliest and the poorest of the Basilewskys.

Soroka still bows to me. How does he find the courage after all those letters?...

Poor wretch — you cannot guess the future, and you do not feel that the soul of Turcan, the man executed yesterday for murder, has gone to hell and... will write to you.

I must say, I am greatly admired.

Mme Anitchkoff introduced me to Mme Smelsky, wife of the inspector of consulates, a man beholden to M. Anitchkoff; moreover she is a cousin of Princess Souvoroff and a friend of Mme Tutcheff.

I made a point of being charming.

Mlle Howard meets Mme Anitchkoff in church and says to her in a tone of the most tender solicitude:

— What, Marie went to Russia alone with her maid?

— No, what an idea — she went with her aunt and then her father.

— I was told, continued the girl with an air of deeper concern, that she was engaged and that her intended refused her.

— And I, replied Mme Anitchkoff, have always heard that it is she who refused those who asked for her hand.

It is wrong to tattle, you will say. That depends, I shall answer. A true friend must serve as a second self. Besides, this woman’s sincerity, devotion, and affection are beyond doubt.

Lubimoff is a nice boy — I take him under my wing the way Dina used to look after my martyrs. Truly, he is very good, and he shall be my great friend.

Howard’s words revolt me; I voice my indignation aloud, pronounce savage maxims, and cry that I shall write a letter to that hussy. Finally I send for Broussais, who is to lunch with the Howards tomorrow.

While I was seething and people were trying to calm me down, Broussais pressed his face against a window-pane — all the dogs began to bark and all the men to shout. I let out a genuine cry of joy.

— Broussais, my dear Broussais, how I long to ask your advice!

— What advice?

— Read this... and I hand him Pietro’s famous letter.

— It proves, I added, that I am not the one being turned down; so you may — and I beg you to — tell the scoundrels and the liars what you know.

— Well, said the great oaf, this letter shows me clearly that the man is a scatterbrain.

— Why?

— Oh! One has only to look at this handwriting, this irregularity — it starts here, it carries on at the other end, it finishes heaven knows where.

— Judicial regularity is no longer the fashion. But what do you advise me to do?

— I shall tell you. Let us go to a photographer’s tomorrow.

— Very well — and then?

— There you will put your thumb between your index and your middle finger, and then you will close your pretty little fist.¹

— But...

— Wait — I have played many another such trick with the famous never-mind. You will rest this fist on a table, and it will be photographed all by itself, life-size, against a white background.

— And you will send this portrait to Rome.

— Oh!

— He deserves it.

— What?

— He ought to have crawled here on his knees, the confounded fellow. How dare he write!!

— But he is far away...

— Come now! When one loves, distances do not exist! He is a scoundrel! Send him what I say.

— I shall do as you say.

O rage, O impotence! O abasement!

People do know, a little, that the Tutcheff woman was at Monaco with the Durocher woman and that Maman gave her a flick on the nose. But that is so little compared with the horrors peddled for four years, with caution, with tact, and with the infinite art of which that woman holds the secret.

Belle-de-jour was astonished at my smile and came to advise me not to skate in silk stockings. Has he never seen any, then!

As for Audiffret.. Well, if I stay a few more days in Nice he will become Girofla again.

The thing is, he is handsome, you see; and then, if only I had not written all that you will rot — and then too, I should never have taken him seriously, but rather the way I take Galula and the others. That would have kept up pleasant relations.

To tell the truth... but I was so young. Emile d’Audiffret, thank you. Pierre Antonelli, thank you. These two men, you see, have been my education. Both of them made me suffer, but Audiffret less than the other. He kept me longing for him a long time and never committed himself — whence astonishment, painful, disappointment, rage. Antonelli declared himself at once, but as he is a coward and a poor dependent devil, nothing came of it but scandal. Scandal! Oh!!!

Poor Audiffret... why poor? Free to dispose of his person and his fortune, pampered and made much of everywhere, a good son, a good brother, a good companion. It is not that I am going back to Girofla, but without any ulterior motive I declare that the superb Emile is a man... Of course he cannot be compared with Cassagnac! But Cassagnac is not everyone; if to be a man one had to be like Cassagnac, there would be very few men — or else there would be no Cassagnac.

Now, from the animal point of view — or, to put it more gently, that is to say, taking one young girl and three men... Well, I say it to the credit of the heart of my surface: all three of them are capable of making me fall perfectly in love.

See how gay and happy I should be if I did not have all these social considerations of insult, of indifference, of scandal, or... of all that, in short. If I were like the others, in a word, if I feared neither affronts nor humiliations, I should be the happiest creature alive... just think, in love with three men at once... why, it is charming... with three men on the surface, of course.

All this has nothing to do with Love, which I do not know.