Excerpt from Robert Pinnacle's Journals -
"... I am glad to say that I am acquiring some Italian, though it will never be a match for my French. My facility for language stands me in good stead hereabouts and I have found a good friend in Alphonse [thought to br the poet Lamartine] who has introduced me to roulette - a game invented at this very casino, conveniently next to his dwelling. It consists of a wheel of turning numbers into which a ball is dropped to bounce where it will, settling finally on an apparently random figure. I have quite a fascination for watching this curious action and have sometime experienced the strange sensation of knowing when it will land on my number...
...Met Mme __ . Her drawings were most finely-detailed and of admirable precision, yet executed with much esprit. They were, undoubtedly, among the most beautifully proportioned prospects that I had seen. I asked with whom she had studied and received the reply that as a young girl she would roam all over the house, even to the attics, and peer from the upper windows to the countryside below. The intersection of the window frames had assisted her grasp of perspective. These childhood drawings were much encouraged by her governess who I gather had some artistic connection.
Some of her early drawings she had made into fans, which she uses, signalling to me across the salle. I often examine these and always notice yet another nuance which has escaped my first perusal. The work's finest quality is that the feeling of light and space goes beyond feature, powerfully affecting the senses...
... I see her make her way between the baths and the chapel. each day she seems a little more frail. She no longer dances. She takes her sedan chair. Sometimes I pay a call to be trounced at cards but today she was too fatigued to entertain visitors.
At chapel this morning I saw her bewildered face in the shadows. she prays to a god who appears not to heed her suffering. She is the best of people...
...On reaching Lyon, I took out the fan that Mme - gave me as a gift for Isabel. I shows the prospect from the topmost window of her home. I watch as she appears from the patchy shade of orange trees. She descends the stairway and steps forward, her head tilted to catch the sound of distant water and she walks toward the bridge which spans the sepia lake."