Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 7 March 1875

I was so enchanted with my pretty little face — which, without flattering myself, was adorable — that I could do nothing but relish the pleasure of seeing myself admired. I do not know why I am so gay today, I said. And why not — asparagus, fresh cucumbers, and a new opera!
Il conte Ory is being given for the first time. We have number four in the dress circle.
Allard does my hair in Empire style, and I put on the white silk dress with the oriental overdress. To feel pretty, elegant, gay — and no one! Damn it all!
The house is full, but I am bored sitting alone like a doll, silent, with no one to look at. So by the middle of the evening I am numb, my throat is dry, and it seems to me that something like the devil^["The devil" is Marie's code name for the Duke of Hamilton.] was needed — the man I think of often and will never forget — when one considers that here was a man who came, whom I saw, whom I found attractive, who, as if to mock me, pleased me — and greatly — and went away so that I may perhaps never see him again. Oh mockery! Oh human heart, oh woman! I was saying, then, that something like him was needed to rouse me from my stupor and loosen my tongue — which was literally tied. Nothing comes and I leave in quite a different state from that in which I arrived.
In the foyer I watch all Nice parade before me — Nice that I hate and despise through spite, and because it deserves it. What a dismal hall — this Prodgers and this Vigier plunging their beaks into the pit like famished birds of prey. That eternal Gros flitting from box to box to bestow on each lady for a moment the happiness of a gentleman escort; that signal Saëtone sweating and blushing beside the Maccainne who did the same.
Then that pale, yellow, bilious Polish count — seeing that I do not look at him in his box, he descends to the pit and, leaning against a box with his arms crossed, fixes me; when this maneuver does not succeed he goes to the grand box and from there persecutes me still.
There was Arnim, but only for a short time. Then this Volkenstein with the red arms, and several other wretched specimens of the same sort.