Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 3 January 1875

How time passes — twelve years, more than that, thirteen years since I could write, how old I am — I shall be sixteen in a few days.
"It nags at me and fills me with dread. I hope and hesitate at the same time."
Dina, Maman and Walitsky have gone off again to San Remo — I go out alone with my aunt.
The Italian has a handsome carriage and two fine horses that he drives himself. Ah! how furious I am at that man!
Young Mlle de Galve is on horseback, and Mme de Galve passes us in a cab and nods to my aunt.
We go to the Cercle — there is no one there who matters. The Promenade is full and empty at once.
I am bored without admirers — as if I had always had them and were accustomed to them.
Oh! but I do not miss the ugly Pole. God preserve me from it — quite the contrary. A Polish lady whom I have the misfortune of encountering everywhere has exactly the face of that little creature: his languid, muddy eyes of a pale grey, his cheekbones, his complexion, his face. What horror that face inspires in me!
Ah! how golden, curling and pretty my hair is! How I love it. I write before my mirror — I have gathered my beautiful curls forward to the top of my head and they fall over my forehead, mingling with the little wisps. Oh! but oh! oh! No!
I looked at myself without lifting my head — the candlelight is reflected in the gold of my hair; my face, flushed from reading Joseph Balsamo, is in shadow.
Ah! how I resemble the Duke!... I make his expression! My eyes narrow, my lip takes on that disdainful look, my face fills out...
Oh, bliss... it is incredible and my poor heart beats! I lack only a moustache — I take the hair left on the comb and press it against my upper lip, but it makes a mess of things. Yet without the moustache I hover between the Apollo Belvedere and Hamilton — through him I resemble Apollo, through Apollo I resemble him. I cannot gaze enough at myself... Ah! if only I could always remain like this — no, I do not want that, it would ruin me as a woman — no matter — ah, how happy I am. Ah! if someone came to tell me at this very moment that I resemble him, I should go mad with joy.
When I raise my head it is no longer so — no, I will keep it bowed, I write and look, I write without seeing what I write, it must be dreadful scrawling — no matter, I want to see myself, I resemble him.
Triple fool that I am!
No — it is not a resemblance of a moment, and as long as I am bent forward it holds.
Often I ask myself whether I do not hate him — is that not curious? But true, nevertheless, especially the day I saw him so close at the pigeon shooting. Once the first moment of astonishment had passed, I asked myself whether instead of admiration I did not feel disgust for him, whether his face instead of being attractive and beautiful was not plain and repellent, and whether instead of feeling drawn toward him I did not feel repelled?
For a moment I told myself I thought him handsome only because I had not seen him close up; that close up he had something insolently repellent about him. Then I searched the surface of his face for a spot worth kissing — I chose the cheek near the ear, but it was only a last resort. His ear was red and sunburned, and his skin rather rough to look at.
I had not finished thinking this when I was already thinking the opposite. To this day I recognize in him the qualities I found in him then, and to this day I do not know whether I find him attractive or repellent. Yesterday he seemed disgusting; today incomparable — and it is always so. In truth I know nothing myself — I love him, or he is indifferent to me: one of the two must be the case; it is not so hard to guess. At trente-et-quarante there are only two chances; at roulette, thirty-seven. This is trente-et-quarante.
I am talking nonsense, rambling.
Swiftly I braid my hair and raise my head — and annihilate the resemblance to that devil.
Poor fool that I am!
What foolish follies these are — to doubt that he is the only man who can please me! In truth it is a waste of time.
Yes, I love him a hundred times, a thousand times — yes!
And yet if I saw him with his wife, I think I should want to cut my own throat for having admitted, even to myself, this unworthy and humiliating weakness.
To love! To lower myself to the point of loving a man who does not adore me! Fie! I am debasing myself.
And yet I find a great sweetness in this humiliation — a painful, vexing sweetness, but a pleasant one.
What humiliation matters — to be gentle? No — to be odious, abominable.
What would you have — my only diversion is loving this Satan!
This evening again at the Italian opera — the same opera, almost the same audience with the exception of the Galves.
Arson, the other one's brother, is introduced to us by Paul, who has not gone out in three days; and tonight I brought him to the opera to serve as our escort.
Audiffret in his box, melancholy, his head resting on his arm as if dreaming.
My aunt finds that he is the very image of her late husband — not as he was when she married him, but in a photograph we have of him taken at thirty. If that is the case, Romanoff must have been handsome — indeed it was well known that he was called bel homme (pink dress, my hairstyle good).
Two evenings in a row at this theatre — it feels like home now, and I like it. I return at half past ten to get up for Leclerc, who comes at eight.

Notes

In English in the original. ↩