Monday, 5 November 1883

The leaves have fallen and I do not know how to finish my painting. I have no luck. Luck! What a formidable thing! An inexplicable and frightening power. Since I began dressing myself in Paris I have waged war against stupid, unbecoming fashions. For five or six years I have been asking for draperies, gathered bodices, loosely arranged, mythological or Louis XV; skirts in the antique style, Judaic robes. I seemed very eccentric. But by dint of spending hours at Laferrière's, Worth's, or Doucet's, the fashion has caught on, and for two years now one sees nothing but draperies, jabots, fichus, negligently worn sashes and so forth.¹ The most sought-after cuts at Doucet are of my invention. And none of it bears my name. It is a new style, distinct, highly characteristic, and which ought to bear my name... But there it is... Oh well... There is also the Princess, Tchoumakoff, and Agathe. The Princess irritates me. I can no longer look at her thick figure and her eyebrows perpetually arched to an enormous height above hooded eyelids.² When she laughs her eyes close entirely and her eyebrows express the most vivid astonishment. I am disgusted with everything; there are days when one understands nothing. One desires nothing. That painting in the boat — the canvas is there and I no longer know whether I should do it... Oh! yes — but quickly, quickly, quickly! In a fortnight, and show it to Tony³ and Julian⁴ utterly stupefied. If I did that, I should come back to life. I suffer from having done so little this summer; it is a dreadful reproach to myself.