Wednesday, 7 December 1881

Mme Gavini, her cousin and her niece have just left. A [Blacked out: evening?] spent deep in Corsica. Imagine — Berthe is coming back. After all her shipwrecks. No, I will not see her; she has never done me anything but harm; she is a liar, wicked, and not even amusing with all that. 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 than twice a week — the vile under-Potain said to me in a detached manner whether I was preparing to travel. Their South! The very idea always puts me [Blacked out: always] into convulsions — I did not dine over it, and if Julian had not come I should have wept all evening with rage. Well — no, too bad, but I will not go to their South. To die then, to die here, in the midst of life, in good health — my life here is a tomb, but ill as I am I do not want to go away, and I know it is almost essential, but the thought tears me, despairs me! Hotels again, railway carriages again; here I do nothing, but that lasts twenty days, a month — whereas there one does not know

where — exile, far from everything. No, No, No! I cry out No like someone who fears being forced to yield, who knows they will yield. Ah! How horrible it is. How sad, and how God persecutes me! I feel as though my inactivity, this interruption of work — it feels as though tomorrow all of it will start again; one always believes that tomorrow this torment will end. Whereas if I were to... go away, it would be with the resignation of one who goes to die before the first milestone on the road.