Then to the Pincio, then to a milliner to order a Marie Stuart cap, and a Marie Antoinette turban.  The woman showed me a gown she was making for a ball at the Quirinal, day after to-morrow.

This plunges me into inconceivable torture.  If you knew how I dread spending the Carnival without a single amusement!  We found the ambassadress’s card at our home, so she has returned the visit.  It is rather late, all the same.  Her cousin came at dinner time.  The Grand Duke of L——­ asked who we were (who is that pretty Russian?).  B——­ says Mamma ought to go to call on the Marquise de M——.  He says it is the custom here, especially from a foreigner to a Roman lady.  Let Mamma go anywhere, provided that I can go where I like.  My torture has no bounds, I am dying of it every instant.  Do you want a proof of my despair?  There are times when I hope to marry A——­ and be something at Nice with P——­; that gives the measure of my discouragement, my desperation.

I have had this humiliating thought once or twice.  I tell you to show you how low I descend, how vexed, how martyrised I am to live in this way.  Who will restore my lost time, my best time?  I have used every expression, and am dying because I cannot make myself understood.

I have written to C——­ and to B——.  I was in a hurry to tell them the good news.  I have the very weak middle notes which accompany the abnormal compass of my voice.  I have found a method of singing that strengthens them wonderfully, so that they are almost as strong as the rest.  This delights me, and I am eager to write about it to B——­, who is so much interested in my voice.  But for that, it would have required two years study to render them satisfactory.  I thank God, and will pray to Him for the other things.

Thursday, January 20th, 1876.

After three years study, if no accident happens, I shall have a voice such as is rarely heard, and I shall not yet be twenty.

F——­ is severe and just.

I am afraid to say all that I think of my voice; a strange modesty closes my lips.  Yet I have always spoken of myself as if I were talking of some one else, which has perhaps made people think me blind and arrogant.

Friday, January 21st, 1876.

I want to have a gown like the one worn by Dante’s Beatrice.

Saturday, January 22nd, 1876.

Still another proof of the falsity of the cards.  Yesterday I had a sort of sorceress come and she pretended to give me good luck.  She told me to call the person I wanted.  I called A——­ and that woman told me he could not live without me; that he was dying of grief and jealousy, and he was especially jealous because a wicked woman had told him that I loved another man.

May all the witches die!  May all the cards burn!  They are nothing but lies!

Sunday, January 23d, 1876.

I am making a large white garment for the house, for the spring, in Nice.  Nice, miserable city, why cannot I live there as I like?  In Nice I know everybody, but to live in Nice except as a queen isn’t worth while.