November 30.
A moist wind—and the snow and ice have melted. The mud is impassable. There is a stench of marsh, dung, and rotten fish. Epidemics abound.
December 4.
Again frost—frost without snow. It is so slippery that one runs the risk of breaking one’s neck at every step.
And these changes of temperature continue throughout the winter. Nature seems not only cruel, but positively mad.
An unnatural city! How can art and knowledge flourish? They have a saying here: “No time for luxuries—we can only just manage to live.”
December 10.
Went to an Assembly—a rout at Tolstoi’s:
Mirrors, glass, powder, beauty spots, hoop-petticoats, and curtesies and bows—just as we have in Europe, in Paris and in London.
The host himself is an amiable, learned man. He translates Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and the political advice of Niccolo Machiavelli, the noble citizen of Florence. He took me through the minuet, addressing me with compliments from Ovid. He compared me to Galatea, because of my skin, “white as marble,” and my black hair, “the colour of hyacinth”—an entertaining old gentleman! clever, yet a thorough paced knave. I will note down a few sayings of this modern Machiavelli: