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.
I am sad, I am in a foreign country, I long to return home, just for a single day, for if I stayed longer, I should want to go back.
In the evening we went to the Apollo theatre, they gave the Vestal and a ballet. I wore white with a Greek coiffure. There were a great many people, and an especially large number of men. Not a single woman between our box and the stage.
From Monday, January 24th, to February 10th, 1876: Rome, Hôtel de Londres, Piazza di Spagna.
I swear that all these tragic and jealous remarks about A—— were written under the influence of romantic reading, and that I only half believed them while I was writing, exciting myself for the pleasure of it, and I greatly regret these exaggerations.
The archimandrite has been at our house. He is a charming man who, after having been a soldier, turned monk from despair at having lost his wife. He told us that there was a Madame S—— who greatly desired to make Mamma's acquaintance.
Returning from the photographer's, such dismal thoughts filled my brain that I did not dress and let Mamma and Dina go out without me. Being left alone, I am very sad, I am singing "Mignon."