I am having a very dull time, and my spirits are down to zero. I do want Sergy so badly, so very badly! Oh! if I had only not come to that horrid Cernobbio! I am spending my days stretched in an easy-chair, yawning over a book. Melle. Nadine’s room is next to mine, and I can hear her singing or chatting with her intimate friend, Baroness B⸺ a tall, rather ungainly girl, with red hands and very bad manners. Her mother is a very troublesome, bad-tempered old lady, embellished by a horrid black wig. She is vulgarity itself, and resembles a cook trying to play the lady. That detestable woman generally makes her appearance with a horrid pug-dog tucked under one arm, which snarls at you, and flies out of her arms trying to bite your toes. Melle. Nadine and her friend carried on a flirtation with a young Italian tenor, and ran after him in a most barefaced fashion, contriving both to catch him. Melle. Nadine, who was determined to keep him for herself, took him in hand and totally eclipsed the young Baroness, which led to a succession of stormy scenes. I perceived that the atmosphere was highly charged with electricity, and that there will be a row presently. One day they had a fearful dispute about the hero of their romance, after which the young Baroness did not appear for a week. Her mother, wishing to reconcile the rivals, brought over her daughter to make up her quarrel with Melle. Nadine, but the interview was not pleasant. Melle. Nadine refused to see her friend’s outstretched hand, at which the old Baroness flew into a rage and fell on Melle. Nadine with fiery reproaches. “What!” screamed the old lady at the top of her voice and rolling infuriated eyes, “My daughter wants to make up with you and this is the way you treat her. You base, ungrateful girl! I will never allow her after that to set foot in your house!” Having said her say, the old Baroness sank into an armchair, holding strong smelling-salts to her nose, and throwing back her head, she waited for a fit of hysterics which would not come, and two minutes after she made her exit, banging the door after her. If I were in the place of Melle. Nadine I should have nothing more to do with the Baroness and her daughter, but half-an-hour afterwards I saw both young ladies seated close together on a bank in the garden, hand in hand, mingling their tears together, after having made each other the vow of eternal friendship.