She doesn’t have an idea in her head. I should enjoy going to bed with her if she were deaf and dumb. If that were fame, there would be nothing left for me to do. And yet, proportions taken into account, that is all it is.

I can’t get around this dilemma: I have a horror of troubles, but they whip me up, they make me talented. Peace and well-being, on the contrary, paralyze me. Either be a nobody, or everlastingly plagued. I must make a choice.

I prefer to be plagued. I am stating it.

I’ll be properly annoyed when I am taken at my word.

I read novel upon novel, I stuff myself with them, inflate myself with them, I’m full up to my throat with them, in order that I may be disgusted with their commonplaces, their repetitions, their conventions, their systematic methods of procedure; and that I may do otherwise.

OCTOBER

In order to have an interesting head, he would carefully trim his hair every which way, with here and there a straight and protesting tuft to indicate the eccentricity of his thoughts and the boldness of his intentions.

You say, “I am vain,” but you are especially vain of saying it.

Nothing is worse than the short stories of Balzac. The form is too small for him. Besides, when he had an idea, he made it into a novel.

This evening, memories are using my brain as a tambourine.

Papa has taken to wearing gloves like a young man. It is a vanity that has come to him late in life. If you were to ask him why, he would say that age is freezing the tips of his fingers.

NOVEMBER

We want to found a literary review. “Who will do the commentary?” each of us said. No one wanted to do the commentary. Someone suggested: “Let’s take turns doing it.”

In the end, it seemed that we all had some items of current comment in our pockets, ready to be delivered for the first issue . . .

Vallette, in his capacity of editor-publisher, embellishes his conversation with expressions such as: estimates, balances, incoming funds, accounts rendered.

Our scorn for money having been proclaimed loud and strong, we shall be enormously set up if the first issue brings in a profit of ten sous.

Last night, the 13th, first meeting of La Pléiade at the Café Français. There were some strange-looking characters. I thought we had done with long hair. It seemed as though I had come into a menagerie . . .

. . . [The legal standing of the periodical is discussed] . . . If there should be an attachment . . .

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