_[Menton, February 6, 1874], Friday._
Last night we had a masquerade at the Villa Marina. Pella was dressed as
a contadina and looked beautiful; and little Nellie, in red satin cap
and wonderful red satin jacket and little breeches as of a nondescript
impossible boy; to which Madame Garschine had slily added a little black
tail that wagged comically behind her as she danced about the room, and
got deliriously tilted up over the middle bar of the back of her chair
as she sat at tea, with an irresistible suggestion of Puss in
Boots--well, Nellie thus masqueraded (to get back to my sentence again)
was all that I could have imagined. She held herself so straight and
stalwart, and had such an infinitesimal dignity of carriage; and then
her big baby face, already quite definitely marked with her sex, came in
so funnily atop that she got clear away from all my power of similes
and resembled nothing in the world but Nellie in masquerade. Then there
was Robinet in a white night gown, old woman's cap (_mutch_, in my
vernacular), snuff-box and crutch doubled up and yet leaping and
gyrating about the floor with incredible agility; and lastly,
Mademoiselle in a sort of elderly walking-dress and with blue
spectacles. And all this incongruous impossible world went tumbling and
dancing and going hand in hand, in flying circles to the music; until it
was enough to make one forget one was in this wicked world, with
Conservative majorities and Presidents MacMahon and all other
abominations about one.
Also last night will be memorable to me for another reason, Madame
Zassetsky having given me a light as to my own intellect. They were
talking about things in history remaining in their minds because they
had assisted them to generalisations. And I began to explain how things
remained in my mind yet more vividly for no reason at all. She got
interested, and made me give her several examples; then she said, with
her little falsetto of discovery, "Mais c'est que vous etes tout
simplement enfant!" This _mot_ I have reflected on at leisure and there
is some truth in it. Long may I be so. Yesterday too I finished _Ordered
South_ and at last had some pleasure and contentment with it. S. C. has
sent it off to Macmillan's this morning and I hope it may be accepted; I
don't care whether it is or no except for the all-important lucre; the
end of it is good, whether the able editor sees it or no.--Ever your
faithful friend,