Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 1st July 1875

At the concert with the Sapogenikoffs in two landaus. Audiffret — pale, in a straw hat — stays close to us, and it rains; my aunt takes pity and gives him her umbrella.
He says he was about to leave again — but since we are still here, he will stay as long as we stay; and a great deal of other nonsense.
Saëtone leaves first, and before the rain — so Girofla alone is invited to our house this evening.
I am wearing my mother’s jacket — there is something astonishing about the whiteness of my neck and bosom. The lamplight yellows it slightly, but in daylight one can scarcely distinguish skin from lace. It is not I who say so — it is Marie, it is Olga; women, in short.
Nina and Walitsky play a four-hand duet; I drift.
A few minutes after the Niçois arrives, the young ladies go off to shout and laugh in the green anteroom with Smirnoff. I remain in the salon, and Audiffret deigns to draw his chair close to my armchair — but we talk without saying anything.
He praises my jacket, whose history I recount, and says it suits me very well, that it is charming, that I must have my portrait done — the bust only. We have tea; we speak of my trip to Russia; Audiffret says, as always, that I shall not go:
— We shall stay in Nice.
— We shall not leave — all this with a slightly familiar air, but not an impertinent one.
I tell him he has the evil eye and a malicious tongue — that he is a bringer of ill luck.
After that, he proposes that we go and do some table-turning.
We move to the salon — the young ones only; the older folk stay at the table.
We laugh and carry on. I am horribly shocked by the manners of the Sapogenikoffs, and Dina is no better. I have a terrible fear of being lumped together with these girls — arms flailing, legs splayed, mouths shrieking.
I am no longer jealous of Olga — on the contrary, I am amused to see her call him Emile and him call her Olga, just like that. They are droll.
That girl serves as a lightning rod. Girofla absolutely wanted to touch my finger to transmit the fluid and turn the table. In the end we made it turn and jump — with our feet.
Then we play — or to be more precise, Girofla and I play — at bouts rimés.
He gives me Nice, good-day, counterfeit, love, Nice — and I write:

When one departs from Nice And bids it good-day, It is no counterfeit joy: It inspires no love.
— Here are mine, says the handsome Niçois — it’s a bit serious, but —
— Never mind, give them here — and he reads.
When last year I saw you in Nice, I longed to bid you good-day, But that counterfeit bliss was not mine, And I had to hide my unhappy love.
Editors’ note
[Three lines crossed out]
— Yes, it’s a bit serious, I say — but never mind, it’ll do.
Marie and Dina wanted to see a full declaration of love in those verses; I see only coincidence. Another girl would read a thousand things into it — I think nothing, and remain calm without supposing anything.
We write a great deal more nonsense. It was enough to make one die laughing when Girofla wrote and declaimed — with gestures — these verses to Giroflé:
Olga came to the tower and crammed herself into the oven
To wait for her Emile and bid him good-day;
He said to her: You are always here
To speak to me of your love!
I don’t understand this bad pun!
I answer for her:
The tower is but a shack
That cracks at every storm
One must be a douraque
To inhabit this wreck
And sing “Pauvre Jacques”
Like an old Cossack.
The rhymes were supplied by him.
To finish, I give him twelve rhymes — impossible words — so that he might pay us compliments. Judge whether, with such words, it was easy, or even possible.
These young ladies, by their grace
And the smile of their pretty faces Gladden my poor carcass So that my heart breaks And I go to my straw mattress — Olga shatters me
She is sweet as molasses
Marie, not at all a woodcock
Far from her, sadness flees — etc., etc.
I shall not repeat all this nonsense — during the reading, every verse was interrupted by bursts of laughter.
Not until one o’clock does he leave.
I am annoyed at being with these girls who shriek so much — I am dazed, ashamed of their manners.
Fortunately the man understands the difference and behaves in consequence.
Well! I am rhyming.

Notes

À la musique — the open-air band concerts, probably those at the bandstand of the Jardin Public, a regular social gathering in Nice. ↩
Landaus: four-wheeled enclosed carriages, named after Landau, Germany. ↩
In French in the original: casaque — a loose-fitting jacket or bodice. This is the one Maman wore at sixteen, twenty-two years earlier (see the entry of 30 June), which still fits Marie perfectly. ↩
In Italian in the original: jettatore — one who casts the evil eye, a bringer of bad luck. A superstitious concept Marie invokes playfully here. ↩
Faire tourner les tables: table-turning, a popular spiritualist parlour game of the 1870s in which participants rest their hands on a table and attempt to make it move through supposed supernatural forces. ↩
Paratonnerre: lightning rod; here used metaphorically — Olga absorbs Girofla’s attentions, shielding Marie from his attempts at physical contact. ↩
In French in the original: fluide — the spiritualist concept of a vital energy or current transmitted between participants during table-turning séances. ↩
Bouts rimés: a parlour game in which one player supplies rhyming words and the other must compose verses using them. ↩
In French in the original: Nice, bonjour, factice, amour, Nice. ↩
The printed edition (Mon Journal, vol. 5) has a note at the foot of the page here, without saying whose it is — apparently Marie’s own jocular afterthought: “The day after a great storm it was said that the tower had cracked and that the châtelain was no more than a little ash.” (In French in the original: «Le lendemain d’un grand orage on a dit que la tour avait craqué et que le châtelain n’était plus qu’un peu de cendre.») The tower of the verses is probably Audiffret’s (see the verses at 035.0100–0101). ↩
Russian durak (дурак): fool, idiot. Marie code-switches into Russian for a comic rhyme — douraque being her phonetic French rendering of the word. ↩
Title in French in the original: pauvre Jaques (Marie’s spelling) — Pauvre Jacques, “Poor Jacques”, a popular sentimental romance of the 1780s attributed to the Marquise de Travanet. ↩
Bécasse: literally a woodcock; French slang for a silly, scatterbrained woman — which Girofla’s verse is denying Marie to be. ↩