Sunday, 26 May 1878

Messrs Filipini and Multedo! Multedo disgusts me, but I am agreeable though excessively cold.
Mouzay and his daughter are dining. With the daughter we always have conversations about physiology, philosophy, and a host of things pertaining to love. It keeps me in practice for when I have occasion to converse.
It is all very sad.
Mouzay says that since I am a superior woman, people will think twice before loving me. She also maintained that it is not in man's nature to love a single woman. There is no people in the world for writing and talking about love
as well as the French... only they do not practise it as they describe it.
So I am too strong to be loved... I frighten people... it is true. What is to be done, then!...
I dreamed that I was called Henriette and that Cassagnac came to submit his political projects to me... You see, I am not a superior woman after all!..
Perhaps Mlle Acard's name is Henriette.
Could anything be more stupid, more vexing, more terrible — like my whole life!