The day before yesterday, seized with sadness and discouragement, I sought what might console me, to whom I could complain, whose words could calm my indignation — and I found only Cassagnac! It is strange in the end. [Blacked-out words: two and a half illegible lines]. I live by imagination; I create for myself a fictitious existence in which all sorts of events take place, and I render it to myself perfectly... as though it were reality. This man inspires in me feelings so tender and so pure that I ask myself whether this is what they call love. So on Saturday I would have wished to take refuge on his heart, to stay there with eyes closed against the miseries of the world, wrapped in his great protective arms and under his maternal gaze... And he knows nothing of it...

And then that great man to whom I must devote myself... But there is no such man at present... And there is this one.

[Blacked-out words: We go to] Mme de Charette's afternoon dance, and I am furious. I go in a hat and velvet gown; all the young girls are bare-headed in evening dresses. It is one of those stupid and distressing mistakes one is furious over. We leave after an hour to change into a white dress and come back... But it is late, the cotillon is drawing to a close. So I do not even enter the room where they were dancing. All truly aristocratic Paris was there... That royalist world so interesting at the present moment. Cotillon figures with daggers — to mock the royalist daggers "discovered" by L'Intransigeant. I have no luck... I was seen in that ultra-chic world, it is true, but dressed like a married lady, not dancing, displeased...

There is compensation, however... An hour before, I brought Tony a head painted two days ago and a sketch for the Salon. The head is one of my best things and the sketch is very good — he says not to hesitate, to do it for the Salon absolutely, that I have hit upon a happy subject, that... In short a heap of agreeable things... It is two little girls going to school along the street.

Saint-Amand, who lunched with us, agrees that we have enemies... You made social blunders... Those women invited then dropped... In any case... I feel I am on a volcano — they have revived that old infamy that no one ever believed, and Paris is so gawping, so pleased to glorify or to destroy someone... May God have pity on me...

And then news — someone came to make enquiries of Mme Gavini about me; someone wants to ask for my hand because 1° I am beautiful, 2° I am extremely intelligent, 3° it has been noticed that at our house I am not in the least coquettish... The last is very true... I don't care about anyone and have other things on my mind. It must be some penniless viscount or other... Useless.

And Maman, troubled by this new outbreak of miseries, would have agreed to the first marriage that came along... It is natural — these women, this woman or these women, are an incoherent mixture of a heap of stupid feelings: they love me and won't listen to me, they respect me and plague me, they think me a great spirit and do only as they please, hiding things from me and dreading my criticism... And in a moment of distress or fear of some scandal they would marry me off to any gentleman whatsoever, without love, without money, without honour. In short the most ignoble and atrocious thing in marriage. I feel myself going pale at the thought of being abandoned thus by people who ought to believe me worthy of the highest destinies... They do believe it... But at times they are afraid... And then they are so stupid and so ignorant of everything. It is at a point absolutely unbelievable!! For ten years I have been struggling, and for ten years they have set themselves up as two extremely civilized savages, ignorant of everything in social life! In short, two imbeciles... Eastern women, innocent, foolish, childish, and with the appearance of being like everyone else — which means no one believes it can be possible...

For only two or three years now have they begun... And what difficulties I have had... And think of it — these provincials, these country women from Russia, thrown into the life of Baden, Monaco, Nice... They were taken for corrupt adventuresses, madwomen... They are merely very stupid... And now here we are launched into the highest society. How? Why? By what right? No distinguished birth, nothing but minor nobility; no millions, 150,000 francs a year in expenditure, not even that.

It is natural that this should make people cry out, be astonished, search for explanations...

People are furious, people are jealous... To come from Poltava, without a friend, without a relative in Petersburg, nowhere — and to claim a place in the highest aristocracy of Paris...

In any case, may God protect me.