Saturday, 21 January 1882

Madame Cartwright comes to collect us to go to Bastien-Lepage's.

[Words blacked out: Introduced by this] 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 fashion, a snub nose and an adolescent's beard. One is quite thrown: I adore his painting and it is impossible to regard him as a master; one wants to treat him as a comrade — and there are his canvases to fill you with admiration, awe and envy. There are four or five, all life-size, all painted in the open air. They are entirely beautiful; one represents a little cowherd girl of eight to ten years old in a field, a perfectly bare tree and the cow in the distance. It has a penetrating poetry; the little girl's eyes have that childlike, rustic reverie of late afternoon — I cannot describe it. He has the manner of a little fellow very pleased with himself... This Bastien...

I return home to help Maman receive an enormous number of visitors. You see what it means to give soirées in Paris! says Mother Gavini. Very smart compared to the past.