The Panorama is not yet finished but already astonishing — the reality of it is overwhelming. Military panoramas are something altogether different from paintings in a frame. Coming home, my heart drops at every sound: the bell, Coco's bark. The jury votes today. I work until half past seven; each sound brings a contraction — nothing. If Julian had fixed the mention in advance, if it were truly settled, someone could have telegraphed good news by now. If I already had it I would know. My heartbeat is steady and anxious. The waiting is odious. Miserable life. Everything and nothing. Death — why not? Nobody escapes it. One ceases to exist, that is the horror. But genius lives always; or one writes nonsense with a hand of fire. Because the mention is delayed. Ophelia. I despise myself; I bring the letter to my heart and it stops. Doucet's corsage. I take some opium syrup to calm myself; I seem agitated. I dreamed of the Saintes femmes and fell back to sketching, thinking, working in the state one is in tonight. Impossible to concentrate on anything else. I read Dumas. I smoke. The street whistle is always audible into the night, and people returning from the countryside, tired and dreamy and happy and drunk and exhausted, and the whistle again. Nine forty-five. Julian has gone as far as he could go; if it does not come now, with the results known by five o'clock, and still no telegram — then the legs catch fire, the body burns, the cheeks — bad dreams. Nine twenty-five: Julian would have known by six and would have come, then nothing. I had believed: refused — inadmissible — yet here: very admissible. I watched the carriages. Too late now. I could do a portrait of Cartwright instead — those blue eyes, indecent, shameful to watch; small black pupils, tiny black lashes, black hair, a bacchante, concentrated to an essence. Dina doesn't have eyes like that; not beautiful, but strange. No honour medal. Sculpture: Dallon has one. They could have given it to Bastien — no, they can give him something more. L'Amour au village doesn't merit what they gave it; his sublime Jeanne d'Arc in a landscape displeased three years ago. I have wanted to reread that since. I wanted to see it hung better. I shall show it again tomorrow.