Saturday, 29 December 1883

Oh, wretchedness! There are black days... sad, despairing, soiled... Soiled... These Engelhardts, that newspaper, what it causes people to say, believe, invent... But I have never done anything immoral! And when I think — it is my own fault. Some years ago, that craze I had for photographing myself in a thousand different costumes... My family let me do it... they saw no harm in it — Marie is ravishing, she dresses up and arrays herself delightfully, it amuses her, and off she goes! Everyone who sees those photographs takes them for those of an actress... and the photographer himself must have thought some odd things... Today, looking at the one where I am in Empire costume,¹ Villevieille and Claire laughed. The lines — too... sculptural — the folds that reveal the form... people find it improper. Oh! my friends, lose everything — but keep up appearances! Well, these petty miseries make me profoundly unhappy. I have only lately come to know what is quite proper, and it is my family's fault. Ah! that is hardly a consolation... If one says foolish things, one is right while being infinitely wrong... And there are contemptible, petty, insignificant things, of which I am innocent, that cannot be recovered. Oh, wretchedness. There are sad, despairing, black days. I am covered with slanders... And I have done nothing — neither to myself nor to others. Claire and Villevieille work, and I weep writing at the other end of the library... I feel sullied; [words blackened: but there] are things... that one must know — proprieties... Things... and conform to them... Otherwise... Every fortnight we have a Saturday at the Italians.² Saturdays are the height of chic. We go this evening — my aunt and I, Géry, Morgan, and Rodolphe Julian. I am in black, naturally, very little décolleté, a charming gown, my hair done like everyone else, twisted up on top — but not at my best. There are days when one radiates brightness; others when one is like an extinguished lantern. I am extinguished. We bring Julian back for supper. He, like me, had visions of Balzac in that hall at the Italians. It is ravishing, elegant, artistic. In the dress boxes alone, five or six women painters. Myself, Mlle de Pranuelos, la Darhas, de Luynes, the Marquise d'Hervey de Saint-Denis — and who else? Cabanel. The cream of Paris, and I was not at my best, nor at ease. Another time. They had staged a new opera by Verdi — Simon Boccanegra³ — which seemed to me tedious.