Saturday, 12 November 1883

Drumont of La Liberté¹ comes to make notes on the Grand Dukes and the prominent Russians in Paris. He dislikes the type of work I do, but pays me great compliments while asking in bewilderment how it is possible that I — surrounded by elegance and refinement — could love ugliness! He finds my urchins ugly: "Why did you not choose pretty ones? It would have been just as good." I chose them for their expressiveness. "If I may put it that way — besides, among the urchins who run the streets one does not see so great a galaxy of beauty; for that, one would need to go to the Champs-Élysées and paint the poor little ribbon-bedecked babies flanked by their governesses." Where is the movement, where is the wild, primitive freedom, where is the true expression in that? In well-brought-up children there is already affectation. And then... in any case, I am right.