September 15th, 1873.

I spoke Italian to-day for the first time.  Poor M. (my professor) almost fell in a faint, or threw himself out of the window.  I can say that I speak English, French, Italian, and am learning German and Latin.  I am studying seriously.  Day before yesterday I took my first lesson in physics.  Oh, how well pleased with myself I am!

I have received the Derby.  I found a number of horses entered by the Duc de H——.  The races at Baden!  How I should like to be there.  Nothing prevents me, but I will not go.  I must study.  And with a heavy heart I read of the horse races.  I calm myself with great difficulty and comfort myself by saying:  “Let us study; our turn will come, if it is God’s will.”

I have read this journal.  My eyes are glittering, my hands are frozen.  There is no doubt of it.  I adore, I adore—­horses.  They are my life, my soul, my happiness.  By chance I shook my whip.  There was the same hissing sound as at the races.  I jumped.  I no longer know where I am.  Come; it mustn’t be talked about.

September 20th.

Only at five o’clock I am free, and I am going to the city with the Princess and Dina.  In the French lesson I read Sacred History, the Ten Commandments of God.  It says we must not make unto ourselves graven images of anything that is in the heavens.  The Latins and the Greeks were wrong, they were idolaters who worshipped statues and paintings.  I, too, am very far from following this method.  I believe in God, our Saviour, the Virgin, and I honour some of the saints, not all, for there are some that are manufactured like plum cakes.  May God forgive this reasoning if it is wrong.  But in my simple mind this is the way things are and I cannot change them.

Shall I ever believe that God has commanded a tabernacle to be built to have His oracle heard from the ark in it?  No, no!  God is too great, too sublime for these unbearable Pagan follies.  I worship God in everything.  People can pray everywhere, and He is everywhere present.

I went to the city for a turn on the Promenade.  In the evening we played kings again, but the game isn’t sufficiently interesting.  We played like amateurs.  For all that I had a good time and laughed heartily.

G——­ came and—­I no longer remember in what connection—­said that human beings are degenerate monkeys.  He is a little fellow who gets his ideas from Uncle N——.

“Then,” I said to him, “you don’t believe in God?” He:  “I can believe only what I understand.”

Oh, the horrid fool!  All the boys who are beginning to grow moustaches think like that.  They are simpletons who believe that women cannot reason and understand.  They regard them as dolls who talk without knowing what they are saying.  With a patronising manner they let them go on.  He has doubtless read some book he did not understand, whose passages he recites.  He proves that God could not create because at the poles bones and frozen plants have been found.  Then these lived, and now there are none.