escend, how vexed, how martyrised I am to live
in this way. Who will restore my lost time, my best time? I have
used every expression, and am dying because I cannot make myself
understood.

I have written to C---- and to B----. I was in a hurry to tell them
the good news. I have the very weak middle notes which accompany the
abnormal compass of my voice. I have found a method of singing that
strengthens them wonderfully, so that they are almost as strong as
the rest. This delights me, and I am eager to write about it to
B----, who is so much interested in my voice. But for that, it would
have required two years study to render them satisfactory. I thank
God, and will pray to Him for the other things.

Thursday, January 20th, 1876.

After three years study, if no accident happens, I shall have a
voice such as is rarely heard, and I shall not yet be twenty.

F---- is severe and just.

I am afraid to say all that I think of my voice; a strange modesty
closes my lips. Yet I have always spoken of myself as if I were
talking of some one else, which has perhaps made people think me
blind and arrogant.

Friday, January 21st, 1876.

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, Hotel de Londres, Piazza di Spagna._

I swear that all these tragic a