Wednesday, 20 August 1884

Today I let Maman and my aunt go there alone; they thought I stayed home as a pose... Dina comes and finds me stretched out.
— So you are not going to see Jules? We could tell him that these ladies had locked us in out of jealousy and that we escaped through the kitchen...
This absurdity revives me; I dress in an instant and we go over with our story, which makes Jules laugh. He is not well, but we two talk apart. [Words blacked out: He insists] a great deal that I should be well set up and perfectly comfortable for working. Then... the subject turns to transmigration, the afterlife, nothingness...
While Mme Bastien-Lepage, Maman, my aunt, Dina and Emile talk of the Damvillers apples and the ice-box...
One must speak of this ice-box: his housekeeper had found a more convenient one than ours, so he sent ours back. So I teased these ladies for forty-eight hours before the architect, who reported it to Jules, and now the word "ice-box" provokes jokes every time.
I am perfectly willing to philosophise with this sick man... I am even wholly delighted by it — but Mme Mackay?
Not only did I find strength to go, but it seems I was even pretty! A loose ribbed grey velvet jacket, white lace, and a round hat with grey birds and a veil.
He said: this child is very coquettish.
I had just got up after a day of fever and everything was thrown on haphazardly — but it only works like that.
A very delicate complexion — pale and faintly pink — it is very pretty with grey. Well, he probably noticed nothing.
What an excellent nature Emile has. I called him limited... I expressed myself badly.
He is very intelligent — but so frank and so loyal and so loving and so good that he sometimes seems foolish.
And how he adores his brother.
Now that he sees Jules takes pleasure in seeing us, and knowing me to be very sensitive, he is always trying to be agreeable and to avoid the shadow of a word that I might misconstrue... so as to tease him.
And Jules?.. Jules is not well. But what is the matter with him, really?
If he is simply... worn out, he will recover. Mme Mackay does a pious work in not coming to see him, and once he is better he will go to her. In the meantime what he needs is broths and friendship.
There. It is hard — but that is it.
Very well — and my dresses and my airs and graces and?? But still...
So many things...