Hugues is extraordinary. He improvised thirty-four verses on L'Amour au village — on the spot, in the album, signed. And then his imitations! Gambetta, Madier, Clemenceau — one after another, each more devastating than the last, with that remarkable eloquence that makes parody terrifying. Meanwhile Bastien was sketching him — Hugues rendered with a dozen arms radiating out around him like a Hindu idol, each arm in a different gesture. Hilarious and yet something true about it. Bastien said he is jealous of Saint-Marceaux and will get rid of him gradually. He repeated it several times. I said I loved Saint-Marceaux more. He said: not the way a woman would love. There was teasing about a resemblance between Saint-Marceaux and Shakespeare, and about my once having drawn the sculptor as an egg in an eggcup — the Easter egg affair. The architect told me later that Jules had come entirely of his own accord, without needing to be persuaded. Jules left at midnight. He said late nights were ruinous; the others stayed until two. Tony was enchanted with something I had said about the Salon entries — there was a moment when everyone fell silent and listened while I talked to Julian about the paintings. I was afraid afterwards that I had said too much, that Bastien would hate me for it. One feels a mutual hostility between us — small inexplicable tensions, nothing said, nothing definite — but we are not in sympathy. I cannot say the things before him that might make him like me better. We think identically about art, both of us, and yet I am paralysed. I wonder if it is simply because he does not like me.