Thursday, 6 January 1881

The odyssey of the picture continues. When Amélie went from sad and tearful to cheerful, some time ago I did suspect something was up, but without guessing what. And then suddenly someone says to me: “Do ask Julian whether you will be quite alone and undisturbed in the little room; it is the least he can do, since you are paying for the partition and the picture is for Julian.” The heroine who speaks thus is Mother Magnan, and though a mother she is only twenty-seven, thin, sharp-featured, with a hoarse voice, a real monkey, not ugly; but a good sort, a good woman! She adores her little girl, who is very pretty, and her husband, Dr Magnan, physician at Sainte-Anne, a friend of Charcot’s and seven times crowned by the Académie. You can well guess that I tease her on that score about the asylum, the lunatics and her spouse Valentin. She cleans my brushes and my palette for me, is as kind as can be and quite motherly towards me; obligingness itself, in general. So she spoke thus, and I, suspecting nothing in spite of her telltale air, reply that of course it is understood and there is no need to ask, but as a formality I send the maid to Julian, who sends back word, to my utter astonishment, that he means to remain absolutely master in his own house (his hobby-horse, which Amélie exploits through the maid by having her tell him that I want to dominate, etc. As that is rather my nature, and the maid passes it on to him with her air of goodwill towards me, he is right to believe it, and that is the string by which they make him dance) and that if I make conditions he would rather the work were not done. Note that for him to answer that, the maid must have told him something other than what I had her say.

He comes up, and I go to the confessional to ask him what all this means, explaining everything to him. Then he gives me answers that are no answers; I could see he was prepared, and I still understood nothing, until he tells me that Amélie will perhaps work in the same room as I, that he wanted to oblige two people with this picture, and that if he wants to put Amélie there he means to have the right to do so. Just think — I am thunderstruck; now I look as though I had raised the question knowing that Amélie was involved. I am so taken aback that I stay there talking of other things, and as if I needed to unburden myself I tell him about my affairs with Hubertine. I am decidedly very stupid. On coming out I say neither yes nor no, and Amélie, thinking I accept the arrangement, explains to me that she will not be in my way, will set herself up after me, and very discreetly. I reply that it seems to me difficult, and above all ridiculous, to paint the same picture, even at different sizes, from the same point of view, with the same effect of light. Well, it is unheard of; whereupon I tease her about her love affair with Julian, and the curtain falls. I come home with my jaws clenched and so revolted by this Julian’s duplicity and that girl’s intrigues that I am ill with it. It is lucky, still, that good Mme Magnan warned me; she thought I had guessed everything; it had been talked about, moreover, but I had not heard.

In the evening, a meeting of the board of our future newspaper; they discuss the title, which has already been discussed. I was there yesterday, and this evening I take the Cerny girl there; I felt so dull-witted that I needed all that. I am already on very good terms with the citizens and citizenesses¹. I do not hide from myself how little strength we have and how little all these discussions are worth, but everything must have a beginning; I am taking it up at the very start, I shall share all the hardships, I shall help to raise the edifice.

It is like when I wanted to marry Arnaud in order to create the salons and the republican chic.

No, Julian is too much of a scoundrel. I tell him that for the next Salon I shall do a “refuge” — those lamp posts they have placed in the middle of the streets, where there are often such picturesque crowds — [five lines crossed out]. Whereupon he answers that it has already been done, that he has already done it for the Salon of 1882. It was very deftly filched, but it is my own fault; one does not go handing out ideas like that.

Mme Mouzay writes me a letter that outdoes the first in threats of death — “diseased lungs” — ridiculous bombast!

I answer her: “The threats of death with which you pursue me, madame, will result 1° in my no longer going to your house, 2° in my no longer reading your letters. It is a sure and vigorous means for you of not being wounded by what I should end by saying to you, and for me of not being pestered beyond endurance.”

But this old madwoman is incorrigible. What is odious is that she is convinced — and there you are!

It is an exasperating refrain.

Do you know La Corneille qui abat des noix²? A provincial arrives at the house of a family of Parisian friends and fancies he has penetrated all their secrets: the mother is in love with her future son-in-law, the daughter... In short, they demonstrate to him in vain that there is nothing in it, that the mother is marrying her daughter to this man — “Poor woman, she is sacrificing herself!” he cries — and that the father has dishonoured no one. But our man keeps his ideas and sets off home swearing that these family secrets will die with him. One could have oneself cut into little pieces to prove to Mme Mouzay that her inventions are fancies; she would be like the aforesaid provincial. I do not know how you take it; as for me, it drives me to distraction!