Monday, November 22nd, 1875.

We went to my beautifiers, and also to B----'s. To-morrow we shall
decide upon the carriages. Then I went to see B----, with whom I
always keep up a correspondence. I spent an hour with her; we are
not intimate friends, like young girls, we are mere acquaintances.

We received a letter from Mamma, with a clipping from a newspaper in
which the opening of the opera at Nice was described, and a number
of complimentary things said about us. So people are interested in
me, but let us pass on. Mamma has been to the opera again, there was
some mistake about the box, and old A---- came to give her a box by
the side of his. Everybody came to see her--he was with Dina and
O----. Everybody enquired for us except G----.

While reading this letter I committed a thousand extravagances, to
the amazement of my aunt. Instantly taking a sheet of paper I wrote,
disguising my hand, a letter to A---- D----.

"Sir, here is a recent and true story from which your wonderful
talent will be able to make a drama or a striking romance.

"A rich man, forty-five years old, married in Spain a young girl of
sixteen and took her to his château in France. He was a widower, and
had a son eight years old. This child, at the end of fifteen years,
became a young man of three and twenty. He is handsome, impetuous,
spoiled, but good and loyal. His stepmother is scarcely thirty-one,
and beautiful. They love each other.