Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 28 December 1873

I had planned to do a great deal and managed a few cantos of the Iliad. This morning for the first time I felt the absence of the garden and the sea, as at Acqua Viva. It was so fine, so fresh at nine o'clock; I so wanted to walk about, but there is no garden.
We go to church (brown dress, good); on returning I find my brown hat -- I do not like it, but I put it on. Every Sunday there is a terrible wind. I have no wish to go out; until two o'clock I ran about looking for a fan -- I want an old Chinese one, or Louis XV. I come back for an hour to finish the Iliad; they come to fetch me. But scarcely had the wind calmed a little and we had the landau opened when a dreadful whirlwind arrives, nearly knocking people over, carrying off hats.
The Duchess Centifolia had just descended (gray and violet outfit) from her carriage, but the wind disheveled her. Avigdor and another ugly man came to speak to her. I think Avigdor will take her and Petit will be furious. But how she has the look of a cocotte -- she aims for the vulgar, the girl type; she has such disheveled manners, she simpers -- it does not suit her. Before, she had airs that were majestic, calm and imposing. No, she is not the Duchess Centifolia, nor Lais either; she is simply la Gioia.
My uncle and aunt Tutcheff have arrived; he looks like a perfect pig. Near the public garden, at the corner toward the Hotel des Anglais, a rather good crowd was stationed -- Saint-Clair, Lambertye, Jarozinsky, Krassowsky, the tall Audiffret, etc. etc. I go in with Dina to Mme de Mouzay's, and Bete waits for us below; everyone is at Monaco. We found only her daughter.

^[In English in the original.]
It is very cold; I have my conspirateur.
Leaving her house we go to the London House, then we walk home, where we find Solominka and Tormosoff. After dinner I play the Ruisseau to grand-papa.

^[In English in the original.]
All are gone to the theatre.

^[In English in the original.]
How sad Nice is! And yet I shall weep on leaving it, for it was at Nice that I loved for the first time.
I must not mock or be disgusted; I am no longer a child like the others -- I am a woman by the heart, but a woman-child.
When I remember him! How different he was from all the rest, how he stood apart -- he was like a demigod among everyone. This is not exaggeration, for at Baden itself, when I was a child, I felt it, and I looked upon the duke as a being apart, extraordinary and majestic.