Tuesday, 17 June 1879

Here are the newspapers. [Missing]
While dressing I talk with Rosalie — that may be wrong, but so it is. I speak to her in order not to speak to myself alone, and I give her accounts of what I see and hear (arranged accounts) to amuse myself by hearing her make her comments.
The Acard girl's act of defiance horrifies Rosalie — she thinks it would have been better to give one's husband a slap at home. The sort of persecution of which Cassagnac was something of a victim goes to my head — especially yesterday. The newspapers laugh at Gambetta's hat; it chilled me. There was something sinister in that man's face beneath that hat.
Monsieur Obidine dines with us and then the two Karageorgevitches arrive.
In front of Obidine I had to play the role of a superior woman, but once he was gone I played tricks on the two children and reeled off the old remnants of my Cassagnac and Blanc follies.
You will see in the Republican newspapers severe though just judgments.
Besides, the Acard girl is discontented, dirty, and stupid. And will this sort of dancer perhaps be capable of rising to the level of the failure that poor Mirabeau has just suffered?!
Never in life! There has perhaps been a scene at home. Dirty beast. I do not know if it is because of my hat yesterday, or Gambetta's, or Madame de Boishébert, or something else entirely — but I am taking possession of my Mirabeau again. All this uproar may be explained in two ways, but it is more probable that our orator has no cause to be pleased, and it is precisely "the misfortune that strikes him" that draws me closer to him. It is true that if he had won an enormous success I would be equally wild about him — so there is no prevaricating! Whether it is one thing or the other, the result is the same. And the more mad I am about the Deceased, the more I would give all the world to make the Republic last.
Can you picture the Acard girl at court?