Tuesday, 21 February 1882

Oh, a monstrous success! We went Monday to the Battle of Flowers, dressed up but without masks. Papa, Maman, my aunt, and the Princess kept modestly to the rear, while Dina, Paul, Nini, Bojidar, and I were in the front line — all five of us young, smart in our white Watteau costumes, mauve ribbons, violets, a touch of powder, with the sun playing over everything. We were deluged with flowers and greeted with thoroughly flattering exclamations the whole time; great bouquets rained down; we threw back in kind — it was ravishing, ravishing, ravishing. And everyone was so certain our float would receive the banner of honour that it is in the papers this morning — and yet we received nothing. The committee had other cats to... reward. But had it been by universal suffrage!! I tell you we came home drunk with our triumph. Bojidar would not stop relating it to us as if we had not been there — and did you hear that one, or such-and-such, and so-and-so, what people said to us, how they applauded, and the people, even the flower-sellers who threw us bouquets. And one forgot Sarah to sing our victories — with her coat-hanger shoulders, her long arms, her contorted hands... After all, we are still dancing. Tuesday was somewhat clouded by the disgraceful conduct of the Committee, who gave a first banner to the Lewins and Durands who had nothing very pretty, and a third banner to the Louis XV pierrots who thoroughly deserved the first. Where is justice?! But the evening! Besides, it has been immortalised in silhouette in ink. First we go to Tiste's, who hires us calico dominoes with red dots; we buy half-masks and off we go: Bojidar and I in the lead, while Dina, Paul, and his wife dragged behind and stopped every ten minutes to say: let us go home, there is nothing more to see. But Bojidar saved the situation by throwing himself into it like a demon — I have never seen anything like it; all by himself he stirred up the rather mournful crowd of foreigners who had come to watch the whole thing with a sad air. No, upon my word, some people!

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. [Blacked out: In the end we pretended to believe] that he had a painted cardboard mask and that he had been laughing underneath it for quite some time. At a given moment two hundred people set themselves in motion before the indescribable commotion (oh, pardon) of Bojidar — there is a certain tune we were singing that one cannot resist; I am still dancing as I write...