Sunday, 2 December 1877

When I woke I was exactly the colour of a Fragonard painting — it is a pity one cannot always be so.
We paid a few calls — on Mesdames Kanschine, Doubelt, de Fayet, Boyd.
And I went to my artists' — Breslau, Schaeppi, Zeller, Forchhammer, the Italian girl who sings. I would rather be first here than tenth elsewhere. And it is not even that — it is that... there I play the good-natured princess, liberal and all the rest, and we chat, sing, shout, and above all are witty... Sometimes the Italian Maria, who sings by profession... and I have a finer voice than she does. It is not fair... And I have not yet come into my full voice — decidedly it is not fair.
I am happy to be gifted on every side. Wretch!
Instead of spending your life complaining, you could have cultivated these gifts that God has given you — God who is too good to you. In short, all you can do now is to stop wasting yourself.
There I am the grand lady — one sees me with a halo, and as I make no use of it... I appear doubly charming. If you knew what a delight it is to feel oneself loved, admired, to feel that one pleases, that one is listened to — and that in all of it there is neither constraint, nor falseness, nor deception!
On coming home I find Blanc and the Boyds' calling cards.