Claire prevents me from working again all afternoon... It is horrible — but I try to be pleasant, for after all it is Shrove Tuesday; she came to spend a few hours here moved by a feeling of friendship... And it is dreadful all the same.
# Mardi 26 février 1884
She announces for tomorrow a visit to the studio by the Baronne de Latapie, their old relation.
Elle m'annoncce pour demain la visite à l'atelier de la baronne de Latapie, leur vieille parente.
I have never had such a perfect occasion to use the word tuile.1 And the aptness of this expression strikes me for the first time. If I did not know it, I would have invented it.
Je n'ai jamais si bien trouvé l'occasion d'employer le mot *tuile.* Et la justesse de cette expression me frappe pour la première fois. Si je ne la connaissais pas je l'aurais inventée.
Tomorrow I had prepared to work well — all manner of artistic plans.
Demain je m'apprêtais à bien travailler, toutes sortes de combinaisons artistiques.
Ah! Wretchedness.
Ah ! Misère.
Notes
Tuile (literally: a roof tile): a colloquial expression for an unexpected piece of bad luck, as if a tile had fallen on one's head.↩