It is tiresome to go, but it is horrible to stay.  P——­ has dramatic emotions so genuine that she delights and thrills me.  Come, what was I going to write?  That I am calm and agitated, sorrowful and joyous, jealous and indifferent.  It seems to me that fastidious society is possible to have and, at the same time, it is impossible.

    “I wish to stay and I wish to go,
     How it will end I do not know.”

I cannot lie down.  I am sorrowful, excited.

Oh, calm yourself, for Heaven’s sake.  It hasn’t anything to do with M. A——­, but simply that I am going.  The uncertainty, the vagueness, leaving the known for the unknown.

Sunday, January 2nd, 1876.

“I shall go Sunday at three o’clock,” I said or rather shrieked, and Sunday at one o’clock everything was topsy-turvy.  The trunks were still empty, and the floor was covered with gowns and finery.  For my part, I put on a grey dress and waited quietly.  C——­ and Dina worked, and so well that everything was ready for the hour of departure.

At half past two, C——­ and I got into a little cab and went to hear the band, and I listened once more to the municipal music of Nice.  “Come,” I said to Collignon, “if this piece is gay, our journey will be, too.  I am superstitious.”  And the piece was very lively.  So much the better!

I saw G——­, who bid me good-bye once more.  I haven’t seen the Marvel, but that doesn’t matter.

We got into the landau again, and went to the station.  Our friends came there, one after another.  I skipped about, I laughed, I chattered like a bird.  How kind they are, and how hard it is to leave them.

“You feign this gaiety,” said B——­to me, “but in your heart you are weeping, I am sure of it.”

“Ah! you think so?  No!

    “When to Nice you bid good-bye,
     Unfeigned joy is in your eye. 
     Easy ’tis from Nice to part,
     For she never wins your heart.”

“Bravo!  Bravo!”

The quatrain was made one evening when we were capping verses with G——.

“Give me some cigarettes,” I said softly to my aunt.

“Very well, later.”

I thought she had forgotten, but at Monaco she wrapped a number in paper and gave them to me.  She, who cries out when I ask her for them at home.  At Monaco we parted, and those horrid cigarettes made me cry.  I was sorry for the poor old grandfather, my aunt, everybody.  I am vexed to have to go with Mamma.  I was with her at Spa and, besides, I am used to my aunt.

Oh! torture!  Imagine the tediousness of a journey in Italy.  Mamma and Dina do not know Italian.  I refused to use my tongue; I can scarcely use my limbs.  By dint of complaining because I was not with my aunt, and saying:  “Who asked you to come with us?  I ought to go with my aunt.  Why do you come with me?” I obtained a passive obedience and an alacrity impossible to imagine.

Night found us in a car.  I complained, wept softly, and said the most provoking things to my mother, like the brute I am.