Thursday, 31 January 1878

Blanc! you were not violent with the Hungarian woman?! I sent him three telegrams containing nothing but these words.
Berthe still comes to draw with me, and I am more and more vexed at her stupidity of Sunday evening.
Which is to say that it has quite simply deprived us of going there every month — and me of going to the Bal de l'Opéra half-unknown, unknown enough to enjoy myself greatly.
My aunt has written to him to ask for tickets and has invited him to dinner on Saturday. I declare that I neither wish to see him nor to invite him — and perhaps I speak truly. He prevents me from working.
Do you think that if I had slept more than three hours a night during competition week, I should have been ranked as I was?
We were to keep our names and our masks throughout — had it not been for this...
— Give me a name, Paul.
— The one I like best?
— Yes.
— Suzanne.
— Then you are the old man? asked Mme de Daillens.
I do not want people to think that my dear brother is paying me court — it would scare off all the others. It would be just as if M. Robert-Fleury were to come and compete alongside us in the students' concours. Fortunately there is no question of any folly of that kind.
Blanc! you were not violent with the Hungarian woman?
It is my aunt who invented that Blanc had the function of taking the Hungarian woman for walks, and that after the walk Cassagnac would ask: Blanc! you were not violent with the Hungarian woman?!