December was very cold, snow and ice everywhere, and very hard frosts, which didn’t give way at all when the sun came out occasionally in the middle of the day.  Everybody was skating, not only at the clubs of the Bois de Boulogne, but on the lakes, which happens very rarely, as the water is fairly deep.  The Seine was full of large blocks of ice, which got jammed up against the bridges and made a jarring ugly sound as they knocked against each other.  The river steamers had stopped running, and there were crowds of flaneurs loitering on the quais and bridges wondering if the cold would last long enough for the river to be quite frozen over.

W. and I went two or three times to the Cercle des Patineurs at the Bois de Boulogne, and had a good skate.  The women didn’t skate as well then as they do now, but they looked very pretty in their costumes of velvet and sables.  It was funny to see them stumbling over the ice with a man supporting them on each side.  However, they enjoyed it very much.  It was beautiful winter weather, very cold but no wind, and it was very good exercise.  All the world was there, and the afternoons passed quickly enough.  I had not skated for years, having spent all my winters in Italy, but on the principle that you never forget anything that you know well, I thought I would try, and will say that the first half-hour was absolute suffering.  It was in the old days when one still wore a strap over the instep, which naturally was drawn very tight.  My feet were like lumps of ice, as heavy as lead, and I didn’t seem able to lift them from the ground.  I went back to the dressing-room to take my skates off for a few minutes, and when the blood began to circulate again, I could have cried with the pain.  A friend of mine, a beginner, who was sitting near waiting to have her skates put on, was rather discouraged, and said to me:  “You don’t look as if you were enjoying yourself.  I don’t think I will try.”  “Oh yes you must,—­’les commencements sont toujours difficiles,’ and you will learn.  I shall be all right as soon as I start again.”  She looked rather doubtful, but I saw her again later in the day, when I had forgotten all about my sufferings, and she was skating as easily as I did when I was a girl.  I think one must learn young.  After all, it is more or less a question of balance.  When one is young one doesn’t mind a fall.

W., who had retired to a corner to practise a little by himself, told me that one of his friends, Comte de Pourtales, not at all of his way of thinking in politics, an Imperialist, was much pleased with a little jeu d’esprit he had made at his expense.  W. caught the top of his skate in a crevice in the ice, and came down rather heavily in a sitting posture.  Comte de Pourtales, who was standing near on the bank, saw the fall and called out instantly, “Est-ce possible que je voie le President du Conseil par terre?” (Is it possible that the President du Conseil has fallen?) The little joke was quite de bonne guerre and quite appropriate, as the cabinet was tottering and very near its fall.  It amused W. quite as much as it did the bystanders.