On the following day Camille arrived, not accompanied by her mother, but alone. It was so almost always during the four weeks which this painting lasted, but during the whole of this time the work did not succeed in interesting the artist in me, for my attention was too much absorbed by the adorable child’s confidences, confidences which were ceaselessly interrupted, repeated and prolonged by the interruptions till the details were multiplied and complicated to infinity. Yes, many little facts come into my mind in trying to recall these private sittings which were always somewhat bitter to me. This liberty proved to me how many favourable opportunities her intrigue with Jacques had obtained. Too many little scenes recur to me, and too many multiple and over-lapping impressions which my memory is apt to confuse. It is like a tangled skein of thread I am trying in vain to unravel. Let us see if I can reduce them to some kind of order in classifying them. These recollections, which are so numerous and so similar that they become mixed, are distributed, when I reflect, into three distinct groups; and these groups mark the stages of this purely moral drama, in which Camille, Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet were engaged, in its progress to a real and terrible drama. When I reflect again, it was the difference between these three groups of emotions which justified me in not making a success of this portrait. Had I been an artist who was an imperturbable master of execution, in place of being what I am, half an amateur, always uncertain, and a sort of “Adolphe” of the brush, all intention and touches, all scratching out and alteration, I should not have been able to execute a unique canvas under such conditions. It was not a woman I had before me during these too long and too short sittings, it was three women.