I am exceedingly curious to know what invincible attraction society holds, that it can detain you each evening from nine o’clock to two or three in the morning, that it can make you spend such vast sums and endure such exhaustion. In the days when I longed to come to this place, I never imagined such distances, such intoxications, but I am forgetting that this is Paris, and in Paris people can live together as a family and never know each other. Then an almost-nun arrives, and in two weeks she sees what a man of state does not see in his own house. Or perhaps he does, and perhaps there is a fatherly benevolence in his willful blindness. I will explore that dark corner.

4

FROM THE SAME TO THE SAME

December 15

Yesterday, at two o’clock, I went out for a drive down the Champs-Élysées and through the Bois de Boulogne, on one of those autumn days we so admired by the banks of the Loire. At long last, I have seen Paris! The Place Louis XV[11] is truly beautiful, but only with the beauty that men create. I was elegantly dressed, pensive but ready to laugh, my face serene beneath a charming hat, my arms crossed. I did not arouse the slightest smile, I did not leave one poor little young man standing stock-still in wonderment, no one turned around to look at me, despite the carriage’s leisurely pace, in harmony with my pose. No, I’m wrong, there was one charming duke who abruptly turned around as he passed by. That man who rescued my vanity in the eyes of the passing crowd was my father, whose pride, he told me, had just been pleasantly tickled. I came across my mother, who gave me a little greeting with one fingertip, like a kiss. My Griffith was peering about every which way, little caring who was watching. I believe a young lady must always know where she is aiming her gaze. I was furious. One man very meticulously studied my carriage and never once glanced my way. That flatterer was very likely a coach maker. Clearly I was overrating my forces: beauty, that rare privilege given by God alone, is more widespread in Paris than I believed. Simperers were graciously saluted. Men said to themselves “There she is!” on catching sight of a mottled, flushed face. My mother was greatly admired. There is an answer to this mystery, and I will seek it out.

The men, my dear, seemed to me generally very ugly. The handsome ones resemble us, in a less comely form. I know not what misguided mind invented their garb, which is surprisingly graceless compared to centuries past. It has no style, no color or poetry; it speaks neither to the senses nor to the mind nor to the eye, and it must be impractical: it’s too tight and too short. I was especially struck by the hat they all wear, a truncated column, entirely unsuited to the shape of the head, but I have been told it is easier to bring about a revolution than to make a hat elegant. In France, the most valiant heart quails at the idea of wearing a round-topped felt hat, and lacking the courage for one day, men go their whole lives ridiculously coiffed. And to think the French are said to be carefree! But then, whatever their hats, they are perfectly horrible. I saw only hard, tired faces, with nothing serene or tranquil about them: the lines are angular, and the wrinkles bespeak disappointed ambitions and defeated vanities. Fine brows are rare.

“So these are the Parisians I’ve heard so much about,” I said more than once to Miss Griffith.

“Very amiable gentlemen, very amusing,” she answered.

I said nothing. There is a great deal of indulgence in the heart of an unmarried thirty-six-year-old woman.

In the evening I went to the ball.