Saturday, 18 March 1882

I have started it again three times, but it is finished — it will not come back. So I go to the afternoon dance given by Admiral Krantz aboard the Colbert at Villefranche; it was Lahirle, a friend from the Gavinis', who sent the invitation... I had a score to settle from the evening of Faust where I was so ugly, and besides I have no idea what running joke I have constructed over the past two days — [Blacked out: I want to appear] — about Pomar. I cannot quite see what is funny in it, but I amuse myself by relating it from morning to night. Pomar is the Duc de Pomar, a Spaniard from the colonies after whom all the young women run because he has 600,000 francs a year. His mother remarried Lord Caithness and was thrown out of the London salons on account of a book in which she had abused English society — that is the reason his friends give. Now as Pomar is a most devoted son and has not yet made the happiness of any girl of age or under age, oh, people say he is not his mother's son and that Lady Caithness will not allow him to marry. What is clear is that he is very rich and a very handsome young man. We encountered each other at Monaco on the days of Faure, and one evening at the Français a few days ago; he looked at me, I found him handsome — without knowing he was the man with 600,000 francs a year — and here I am going to Villefranche and deafening Bojidar and my family with talk of my forthcoming marriage to Pomar. Maman, my aunt, Papa, Bojidar, Savine, and I — I in a dress of silk muslin all finely shirred, moire corselet in peasant style, lace, gathered sleeves and guimpe, baby hat of Italian straw with white feathers and a white ribbon. Black shoes. I am very pretty, and Pomar looks at me, and my heart beats as if it were real. First I had a real emotion at the thought of finding myself among this Nice society, and then I go out so rarely that every time it is like the emotion of a debut.

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 introduced to me.