Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 24 October 1874

Winter approaches and my torments begin again. It pains me to write this; I had for a moment forgotten it. Our life, our wretched life! My God, permit me to implore You as of old, to address myself to You! What I asked of You was too much; You did not give it to me. But what I ask now is what everyone has! It is to live in society! I do not ask for extraordinary things; I ask only to live as everyone does. It is not a life of society, a life of pleasures, of balls, of receptions that I ask — it is a life as so many people live. Simply to be tolerably received, to know the foundations of society here, since we have a property — in a word, to live properly. [Crossed out: I do not know] They say one need only be rich to be received! Thanks be to God, we have the means, more than many others, and yet! What then have we done? A money lawsuit — but so many people have money lawsuits; it is not a crime! The Tutcheffs, my dear relatives, my dear uncle, my dear aunt, have done everything they could to make us looked upon askance.
I shall write our history here. My grandfather, Russian on the paternal side and Little Russian on the maternal, is descended through the female line from Polubotok. It is too long a matter to be set down here, written in one evening, in half an hour. I have just made a separate small notebook in which I shall write it little by little; by hurrying I would produce nothing proper.
Mlle Collignon has arrived. She is spending the winter in Cannes and has come to see us. She wants... she wants a great many things. Papa is overwhelmed by this visit; his former feelings return, and I can already foresee all the scenes we shall have following this sudden apparition of the beauty with long hair. I find her very agreeable, witty, likeable — I should not want another as governess were it not for that unfortunate affair with Grand-papa. She is perhaps the ornament of any house, but there are always buts, unfortunately.
Sapogenikoff and Yourkoff are here; they leave again at seven o'clock. There was a quarrel between husband and wife, on account of a letter from her daughter in which she tells her mother that Yourkoff is deceiving her, and for so much love is ungrateful. Marie Sapogenikoff detests Yourkoff because he drove from their house a certain Cima of whom I spoke during my journey to Geneva; she is in love with Cima, and as things were beginning to go rather too far, Yourkoff rightly expelled this suitor from the house. Hence Marie's hatred of Yourkoff, whose infidelities to her mother she discovers (or invents), for her mother makes no secret of the friendship she has for this gentleman.
Collignon sleeps at our house.