— Tell me plainly. — If you spend the winter in Paris you are a dead woman.
It is horribly sad to be kept in inaction by — by — I don't know what! By sheer lack of strength, in the end! Charcot has returned.
Little Brisbane came to see me, then Villevieille — who has herself been ill. And Amélie! Julian is forever anxious for news of me, and the other...
I believed God had left me painting, and I had shut myself inside it as into an ultimate refuge. And now it fails me, and I can do nothing but ruin...
Ah! how cruel God is; the family humiliations and sorrows — but those hardly touched me, could not reach down to the core of my being, and against...
And this evening Julian came; Tchernitsky and Brisbane had also dined. Julian is very amusing; he stayed after everyone else. I should like to put...
But what exasperates me is my illness. Yesterday, the horrible under-Potain who comes every day — the great man being unable to bestir himself more...
Tchernisky dines too.
Julian came this evening. He is truly good, and very amusing besides. We have the terrible plan, as you know... But I hardly believe in any of that,...
I had written to tell her I was quite well. But now I learn that she has returned to the family home along with her husband, and that her sister's...
I put on my tearful scene for the under-Potain, who does not know how to calm me, for, passing from the nonsense, non sequiturs and other exquisite...
Everyone admires my Spanish studies. Maufras goes down on his knees before them, closes one eye and peers through the other through a monocle with a...
I have Irma and am trying to make a pen drawing.
The weather was splendid — and taking precautions! But that is no longer the question; it is Breslau, wholly fixed upon her prey. My Salon is a...
Saturday with Maman and Dina... And Sunday to church, so that no one should say I am at death's door as charming Berthe is telling everyone. On the...
At last, to calm myself, I go to Tony's and show him the sketch of Paul's wife's portrait. very original, very original in its arrangement and well...
I am working, so that it may be so all year.
A fine lady from Poltava, Mme Volkovitsky, dined with us; she saw me with a cold... Ah! I am furious to be told I am ill.
You know — Melissano, Larderel's famous friend, is here; he came to call on us and came back again last evening.
Today the whole family and Brisbane go to Carrier-Belleuse's; I dress myself so well that he occupies himself entirely with *my tones.* It was...
We are giving a *soirée* tomorrow, the eve of New Year's; it has been in preparation for eight days — nearly two hundred and fifty invitations sent...
Instead of that... The two Coquelins were superb, and the salon presented a charming spectacle — a great number of pretty women: first the ravishing...
A few people, among them Géry, who is going to visit relations in the country.
To the Gavinis and to Étincelle, who is charming. There is a long article about our *soirée*, but as it was expected, no one is satisfied: she...
But I was to dine yesterday at the Cartwrights with Munkácsy and other painters, and Maman and Papa went alone. I was furious — but a fever of 41...
She came to our *soirée* with Mme de Kessler; we are invited to her Wednesdays. Then a Baroness de Patlingen from the Austrian embassy... and...
beautiful woman I am not quite at my ease; we find there two or three Americans and little Bastien — very small, very fair, hair worn in Breton...
And today again visitors, and Father Géry. This old man has a villa in Nice and offers it to us if we go there this winter, with such insistence that...
We go to the Comédie-Française — house full of strangers except for Mmes de Jolly and Thouvenel. And Julian came in our absence; if only the play had...
We tear ourselves from Julian's company to go to the Cartwrights, who, not seeing us arrive, send their servant to ask whether we are coming.
Ah! Do you think I have my mind on such things? If I speak of them it is because one must give things the place they occupy — but I am very...
Ah! I shall always be outraged by the infamies committed every day.
So these petty miseries, these wounds to vanity are complicated by a discontent of the heart... It is now nearly five and a half years since I first...
As for Saturday, it was a good day: Bastien, whom I had seen at the ball the previous evening, came and stayed more than an hour. I showed him some...
together — Papa, Maman, Mme Gorpintchenko! Dina and the young couple. I present the miracle of a long, slim, supple figure, filled out where needed,...
I am done for. Wolff devotes some twenty of the most flattering lines to Mlle Breslau... It is not my fault, besides. One does according to one's...
Bastien recommends it to me, and so does Julian, and so does the happy Breslau. Yes, truly happy — and I would give, without hesitation, everything...
Then Papa went to the Consul's.
Since Saturday I have begun a picture. For a fortnight now I have been searching — I had settled on two or three things but they went no further than...
They make amateur music, and as Jeanne patronises and loves artists there were three or four from the Italian opera. The young woman is gentle, kind,...
It seems that old Julian wrote but I had not given him the address and the letter is lost. First day of Carnival... Our carriage is the prettiest...
Battle of Flowers on the Promenade des Anglais.
We are nine: Papa, Maman, my aunt, Dina, Paul, his wife, Bojidar, Mme Eristoff, and I.
Bojidar danced the cancan for a quarter of an hour in front of a gentleman, we said the most amusing things, and he did not crack a smile. that he...
Above all, there had been during the day a carriage wearing the same spotted dominoes — and the people who will hear what they did that evening!
But displeased with my dress, and above all in the grip of a terrible attack of fever, I had but one wish the entire time: that it would end. I was...
So humiliated by my inferiority, so shaken by Breslau, that I am left helpless. And how much time wasted — Biarritz, the illness, and already a month...
Papa found at Monaco a nephew, M. Savine, who has just lost 125,000 francs in two days.
She is not pretty — that is to say, very pretty in profile and when she is silent, but otherwise... I have never seen a young woman so careless of...
This was what was almost wished for by everyone he had martyrised — making himself so unhappy — yet the effect is no less horrible for that.
Ah, we are all very guilty — so this poor martyr did not wish to give us such remorse, and to lighten our consciences: he is not dead at all.
I had to go into town to recover. Scoundrel of a man — he went to old Prince Karageorgevitch to beg twenty francs and tell him that we wanted to bury...
What is annoying is that there were twelve hundred people, no means of finding one's way through such a crush, I knew nobody, and Pomar was not...
Barnola comes often; he has inherited from his aunt. I should like him to marry Dina.
I am staying a few more days here for a variety of small reasons — first the desire to redo a plein-air study, then Sarah gives two performances on...
Besides, in Nice everything seems simple. A crowd of urchins were playing nearby, shoving one another toward the body. Bojidar, Rosalie, and I posed...
I have just done a sketch of Dina, and the evening ended as usual — that is to say, with a frightful wrestling match between Dina and Bojidar,...
The exasperated Bojidar ripostes with Sarah-gosse, Babanine-tat. I go to bed shouting through the door Bojidar-brisseau, Bojidar-thur. And as...
And thereupon the most extraordinary stories, as usual — only Berthe could create dramas without head or tail and come and relate them. Bojidar gets...
One invents some reason at once, I know not what. I never pray in church — it is merely a nuisance of seeing all these Russians, or the vanity of a...
A great crowd. Mme Tutcheff exchanges the Easter kiss with Papa, and M. Tutcheff kisses Maman's hand and wishes her a happy Easter.
Papa has at last departed; we all, and his sisters, went to see him off as far as Monaco, returning by carriage along the new road. There was no...
Maman is kind, though querulous, and tidy — and he is a charming, likeable, funny man, though selfish and abrupt. On the whole I am moved by this...
These are my dark sorrows — squalid sorrows, enough to make one weep. These ladies were very badly regarded here; such rumours had arisen against...
I painted Thérèse — a six-year-old child going for provisions down a farm lane, life-size. Then an old man at his window beside a pot of pink...
No — you see, what it would take for me to live would be to have great talent. I shall never be happy like everyone else. To be famous and to be...
How could one compare a man to it for a single second? Everything levels out before Glory. What a great word —
My own anxiety was quite enough, and I had no need of seeing my family's anxious faces watching me to gauge my emotion. In short, here is what he...
Julian paid me great compliments on Dina's pastel — but what a savage critique of this week's painting!
Assuming I am as gifted as she, things would naturally proceed accordingly. But I have been painting three years! But she has been painting five...