Thursday, 6 November 1879

What shall I tell you? Must I still complain of the cowards who surround me? I can do nothing! My mother had for a moment the idea of going to Russia and arranging everything. I am very naive to have believed it for a moment.
I am condemned. And no one wants to save me. This dreadful sensation of speaking to deaf ears, of crying out in a tunnel from which no one hears me.
Art. By God! I know, but where have you seen a celebrity after two years of studies! Art will give me a position when I am twenty-eight or thirty! For all these little great men known at twenty-five began going to the ateliers at the age of fifteen or seventeen. What I need is something immediate, I am twenty, nearly twenty-one.
It is stupid to struggle. There is nothing more to do. Yes, I know it well, but I am weak, I suffer and I weep. It is absurd since it is useless. It should not be since it serves no purpose.
I should defend myself against it... but I am a coward and I weep for myself.