ouble myself
no more about this man. I will no longer think of him, I will no
longer speak of him as before, I forbid myself to do it.

October 24th, 1875.

I boasted of my conduct yesterday; there was no reason for it; if I
appeared indifferent it was because I was indifferent. These people
don't know how to talk; the Arts, history, one doesn't even hear
their names. I feel that I am gradually growing stupid. I am doing
nothing. I want to go to Rome--to take up my lessons again. I am
bored. I feel myself being gradually enveloped in the spider's web
which covers everything here, but I am struggling, I am reading.

At the theatre P---- with R----, her good friend, as they say in
Nice, began to yawn when she saw all the people in our box.

Why do women yawn when they are jealous and curious? My mother has
noticed it a hundred times, and I, too, in my short life.

Wretched feminine position! Men have all the privileges, women have
only that of waiting their good pleasure.

I should be quite proud if I could make myself really loved by this
man.

Wild, reckless, ruined, vicious, fickle, brutalised by association
with wicked women! His feelings of delicacy, of true love, of
virtue, which are the bloom of the human heart, have been early
swept away from him. The desire for money holds the first place,
money to lead a gay life, to support the riffraff he has in his
train.

How much women are to be pitied! It is the man who first takes
notice, it is the man who asks to be introduced, it is the man who
makes the first advances, it is the man who gives the invitation to
dance, it is the man who pays attention, it is the man who offers
marriage. The woman is like this paper, this nice paper on which we
write whatever we please. God does not hear me, yet I will not doubt
God. Often a desire to do it seizes possession of me, but I am very
quickly punished.

Pshaw! Life is an ugly thing!

* * * * *

Before dinner we went to walk, it was wonderful moonlight. I said a
thousand foolish things to O----, and if Dina and M---- were as
crazy as we, a great scandal would have happened, for we wanted to
dance a ring around a priest who was passing.

O---- is writing a novel, it appears. After dinner we went in search
of her; I shut myself up with her, and the good girl read it. But at
the second page I stopped her and proposed that we should write one
together. I gave the idea, everything,