“Ah! if you knew how I have treated the human race this morning,” I said to M——­ in answer to a remark I no longer remember.

“Ah! if you knew how little it cares! it is a matter of no importance,” replied M——­, very wittily.

How dreary it is to have nobody to care for!

My head is heavy and my eyes are closing, yet at the same time I want to write more, the pen glides easily over the paper and, though I might have nothing to say, I go on for the pleasure of filling the white pages and hearing the pleasant scratching of the pen.

    “My head is heavy and my eyelids close,
     Yet still my gliding pen I will not stay,
     Fain would I tell all my heart’s joys and woes,
     But cannot—­though so much have I to say.”

I am not successful with serious poetry.

Sunday, October 10th, 1875.

I was going to talk with my aunt, but why appeal to human beings?  What can men do?  God alone can help!  God does not hear me!  Just God!  Holy Virgin!  Jesus!  I am not worthy to be heard, but I pray you for it on my knees, I pray so earnestly!  Is not prayer a merit, however small it may be?  Do not the most unworthy obtain what they ask through prayer?  Is it nothing to believe and to turn to God?  And though I should write until to-morrow I could say nothing but the words: 

“My God, have pity on me!”

* * * * *

I who thought I must succeed in everything, see that I am failing everywhere.  I shall never console myself for it.  How everything in this world repeats itself!  I went lately to the Aquaviva terrace and looked to the right.  It was in winter, and the mist was gathering on the Promenade.  I saw the Duc de H——­ go into G——­’s, and now it is precisely the same thing, only then I ordered myself to love him, and now I forbid myself to love.

Then I was crazy over the man; now he interests me because he looked at me.

In a word, why and how?  What do the reasons matter?  I do not love him.  Oh, but I am so provoked!  “Come,” I said, “rouse yourself, I won’t cry about that.”

To straighten myself, throw back my head, smile scornfully, then indifferently, and that is all; moisten the ropes, as they did in moving the obelisk of Sixtus Quintus, and I shall be on my pedestal—­and I have not an instant’s strength.  I preferred to stay in my armchair and murmur: 

“I fail in everything now.”

Confess, you who will read these lines, am I a man?  Confess that I have reason to be angry over it.

I, the queen, the goddess.  I, who should be worshipped kneeling; I, who do not want to move my little finger lest I should bestow too much honour; I with my ideas; I with my ambition; I with my pride!  I confess that, after having seen him go into G——­’s like a master, I feel a sort of respect for him; he acts the duke.