Misha, get my pince-nez mended, for the salvation of your soul! I am simply
a martyr without spectacles. I went to the Salon and couldn’t see half the
pictures, thanks to my short sight. By the way, the Russian artists are far
more serious than the French.... In comparison with the landscape painters
I saw here yesterday Levitan is a king....
PARIS,
April 24.
A change again. One of the Russian sculptors living in Paris has undertaken
to do a bust of Suvorin, and this will keep us till Saturday.
... How are you managing without money? Bear it till Thursday.
Imagine my delight. I was in the Chamber of Deputies just at the time of
the sitting when the Minister for Internal Affairs was called to account
for the irregularities which the government had ventured upon in putting
down the riots in Fourmis (there were many killed and wounded). It was a
stormy and extremely interesting sitting.
Men who tie boa-constrictors round their bodies, ladies who kick up to the
ceiling, flying people, lions, _cafe’-chantants_, dinners and lunches begin
to sicken me. It is time I was home. I am longing to work.