Saturday, January 1st, 1876.
Here is the new year. Greeting and mercy. Well, the first day of 1876 was not so bad as I expected. They say the whole year is spent very much like the first day, and it is true. I spent the first of last January in the cars, and I have really travelled a great deal.
To-morrow, yes, to-morrow I shall be glad to go. I am perfectly happy, for I have made a plan—a plan that will fail like the others, but which amuses me in the meanwhile. If it were not two o'clock in the morning, I would write a whole story of the sale of a soul. The brutes—I have not wept, I have not felt sad once. A very pleasant day to commence the year. I shall go and think only of returning. No doubt I shall change my mind in Rome. All the same, this is where I should like to live.
I had already closed my book, but I and a lot of things to say. I have looked at the great caricature, there are five of us. I have thought of everything; of Mme. B——, of the English, of the people of Nice, of S——, of "Mignon." In a word, a quantity of things. I had a great deal to say, and lo! I stop.
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.