Tuesday, 9 May 1882

Tony and Julian dine here. I put on a fantastic dress and the evening stretches until half past one. Julian is very amusing after the champagne, and Tony very pleasant, very sober, very calm with his handsome, tired face. [Crossed out: melancholy air.] One feels the urge to reassure this soul that looks so strained and melancholy — all in half-tones. I cannot picture this professor overwhelmed by strong feelings; he is logical, he is calm, and if it were a matter of affairs of the heart, he would demonstrate their origin and cause with perfect composure, as if explaining the values in a painting. All in all, and to sum up as he would say, he is charming... perhaps lacking, to some degree and up to a certain point, in what one might not hesitate to call a certain liveliness — what one means by the word wit — but...

The only thing is he changes his opinions — this summer he had spoken very highly of Breslau's picture, and now it is mediocre, and besides she is bursting with pride, and so on. All the same, this evening he is pleasant; you know it lasts a few hours. Carolus always leaves me a little charmed too whenever I meet him — no, I mean good old Tony; Julian and I will laugh about it.

As for the outfit!... A gown of Oriental muslin, Empire-style,¹ with a long train, and a Turkish jacket² of white wool embroidered in gold and lined in pale blue. With the whiteness of the neck... and gold-and-pink mules.

It is Sargent's portrait of a young girl that haunts me — it is ravishing, an exquisite work one could readily place in a museum alongside the van Dycks and Velázquezes.