I have interrupted myself ten times to weep and to think of this summer; when I compare it with the present I am thoroughly wretched. How many lost illusions! What hopes deceived! And I am rid of them. I was going to say that my heart is torn, but it is not true; my heart is whole, my mind is embittered, and deceptions destroy man. Let us surround our hearts with triple brass. I will trouble 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!