I want to have a gown like the one worn by Dante's Beatrice.
Saturday, January 22nd, 1876.
Still another proof of the falsity of the cards. Yesterday I had a sort of sorceress come and she pretended to give me good luck. She told me to call the person I wanted. I called A—— and that woman told me he could not live without me; that he was dying of grief and jealousy, and he was especially jealous because a wicked woman had told him that I loved another man.
May all the witches die! May all the cards burn! They are nothing but lies!
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.