Monday, 8 August 1881

Saint Agathe got us a box for the dress rehearsal of Oedipus Rex at the Comédie-Française.
The staging is perfect, the costumes admirable in their faithfulness and harmony, and Mounet-Sully, who looks very poor in ordinary dress, is splendid in his draperies. Hecht was in the next box. Afterwards I went to the atelier, where I find Amanda Sidval — a Swedish woman, old and a spinster, who really ought not to be called Amanda... Well, she was waiting for Julian who did not come, so I take her away, leaving on the table these verses inspired by Oedipus:
O illustrious Director of the painting atelier, In your absence, alas! two stars here have shone. Where’d you get to, o wicked soul? To what happy, unreal shore had you fled? Signed: Amanda Sidval...
Saint Agathe — I shall truly end by believing that is his real name — dines here and recounts all his monotonous nonsense.

Notes

In French in the original: Œdipe roi. Sophocles’s tragedy, newly staged at the Comédie-Française in 1881 with Mounet-Sully as Oedipus. ↩
Mounet-Sully (1841–1916): Jean-Sully Mounet, one of the foremost tragic actors of the Comédie-Française. ↩
Amanda: from the Latin, «she who is to be loved». ↩
Ou’s qu’étais-tu: a vulgar contraction of où est-ce que tu étais («where were you»). ↩