Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 20 September 1875

There! Two days I have written nothing — I had forgotten my journal, but it was moaning in its white box, and here it is again.
Saturday I went out with my aunt — I did not see d'Audiffret and I was almost bored. In the evening at the theatre. They are giving "Jean le cocher" — I am bored enough for three people at once, in the grand stage box with my aunt.
Sunday I spend my time painting. I worked on Olga's portrait in oils — it was only a charcoal sketch — filling in that large oval tired my hand, but I wanted to paint still more: I took another oval of the same size and had Frédéric pose for me. It was not easy, I tell you!
With great difficulty we made him climb onto the armchair; then Bagatelle was called in and made to play with a stone on the carpet, while Léonie sang to amuse the sitter and told him all manner of things to make him hold his head up.
[Written across the page: All this was never finished or even continued. I would suddenly take it into my head to paint for two hours, then three months and
then nothing.]
I do it life-size, in bust, like a man. He is superb seen from the front, seated, with his tongue hanging out. At last comes the Promenade — I am displeased with myself, not with my face but with myself. There are already a few carriages around the garden.
(I have received my dresses and will describe them as I put them on.)
Saetone never leaves the American woman — it has reached the point where something serious threatens to happen.
The faithful Fiouloulou comes and I chat with him freely and easily. Then comes the patron — this man whom I am beginning to detest not for his face but for himself.
He and my aunt have a rather animated conversation — she has seen him with five or six others, towards evening on the Avenue de l'Impératrice, dancing around a carriage containing a lady — in short, a lady. They laugh and I do not join in the conversation. I am asked if I have seen.
— No — seen what?
— Well, you know, a man who dances in an avenue — it is not natural.
— No, but I did not see it — it was no doubt towards evening, for my aunt laughed a great deal and would not tell me why.
— Ah! it is well that Mademoiselle did not see — for, after all, it was just once, by chance, he says.
I am in my dress — that dress with its square panel falling to the shoes and its divinely made bodice. Pink stockings and Russian leather mules with small square toes and Greek openwork embroidery. It is ravishing. We walk to number 47 where the Sapogenikoffs lodge. Nina alone is at home — the girls are at my house.
This evening they are giving Hugo's Hernani — that poet I find so antipathetic — but despite that I go to the theatre, in a pink dress with an Empire coiffure. I do not feel confident — as when I go out as usual, I feel small.
— Which box should we take? asks my aunt.
— Whichever you like.
She takes the first one on the first tier to the left.
I am furious at being in an ordinary box.
The house is fairly full and all the beautiful ladies of Nice do me the honour of looking at me.
They say that a great deal of attention is paid to me — especially since the
stupid Niçois business. The drama is as monstrously performed as possible — I shall not trouble myself with it.
At the second interval Fiouloulou comes and places himself behind my aunt, then d'Audiffret comes and places himself behind me. I am furious with myself — before this vulgar and arrogant man with his little mocking airs, I am tongue-tied, I do not know how to speak, I find nothing to say. In short I find myself wretched, small, and stupid! And I rebel singularly against such a state, and bear a mortal grudge against its cause. Let no one think I am struck dumb or timid, that I am in love with him — no, oh no — simply his presence annoys me and his manner vexes me and renders me stupid. This wretched idea that he thinks me stupid pursues me! It is dreadful, such a state!
Without detesting his face as I detest the Pole's, I am beginning to detest him. I feel such anger against this man, such malice, that it is curious. He looks wretched — like Gioia after the Duke's desertion — he has lost his chic. And I resent him all the more for it. Saetone comes and I laugh at his love for the American. His presence restores me a little — but soon I fall back into my stupidity.
When they have gone, my friend Ricardo comes: among other things, he asks if we are staying here for the winter.
— One does not yet know, says my aunt — who knows what this winter will bring.
— Then there are plans in the air.
— Yes.
— Ah! so there are plans — is it true? he exclaims, indicating me with a glance and with such an intonation that my aunt and I looked at each other and understood at once which plan he meant, without a single further word being needed to enlighten us.
— What plan? continues the man, pleased to be able to find out without having risked a dangerous question.
— The plan to leave Nice, says my aunt, after exchanging an eloquent glance with me.
The man saw and believed — we understood, and our eyes understood.
How strange they are!
After this evening it will be worse still: for two acts and two intervals, people saw the man standing now behind my chair, now seated — and, best of all, he escorted us out of the theatre, and as our carriage was late, all these good people of Nice could see my aunt and Galula and myself and d'Audiffret, Émile following them, making our way on foot,
towards the Place Masséna where we took a cab into which these gentlemen helped us, and Girofla raised the hood. That gave me a certain pleasure — to be for a moment like other people, not alone and wretched as before.
I return supremely displeased with myself and with everyone.
I am stupid!
This idea that people think me stupid will make me stupid.
It seems strange to me that people speak of me — that I am the heroine of one of those marriages that the public enjoys inventing.
How ugly the world is!
How small men are!
Yesterday at the [Crossed out: theatre] we had the box that little Chilowsky once had — of indifferent memory.
People recalled his curtains always lowered.
— As with Madame Prodgers the other evening, says Girofla — she found it does not do at all to close one's curtains.
— Yes, she was hissed, says my aunt.
— I was there that evening at the theatre, I say — that was more than two years ago.
— She was with Miss Robenson, says my aunt, smiling at d'Audiffret.
— Yes, yes, perfectly — the pretty American, yes.
— I came to know her last summer at Spa.
— This summer? the man asks quickly.
— No, last summer — I used to see her in Nice two years ago but last summer we only became acquainted.
And I nearly got confused saying this. I remember the theatre scandal very well. Mme Prodgers and the Robenson were both so dressed and so décolleté that Collignon who was with me exclaimed:
— Really, to see them both like that, one would take them for two cocottes!
— And then:
— There she is, Miss Robenson — I trust she is done up! She stayed two hours before the mirror — she is pretty but plastered, plastered...
Several gentlemen were in the box, and these ladies had the idea of closing the curtains. Immediately several people in the stalls rose, and in an instant all the stalls rose and turned towards the box with whistles, boos and
cries:
— Why are you lowering the curtains! Are we doing something wrong? Open the curtains!
I shuddered for the two poor women, but they — after two minutes — appeared at the front of the box, drawing back the curtains, calm, and remained so all evening — a little more decent than usual.
I went for a walk this morning at eleven o'clock — the heat was gentle and very pleasant — and returned for luncheon, a little tired.
Afterwards I get into the carriage, go to Nina's, bring Olga home with me, and have her sit for her portrait which is beginning to become quite good.
I am very strict with my painting, but I cannot deny myself a great aptitude. [Some words cancelled.] It is the first time I have worked from life. Olga has posed twice — the first time long ago and the second today — and the portrait is nearly finished. It is not modelled — but can I do that? Having painted for only one year after wretched copies of Bensa's paintings that I reproduced three times a week, with an incapable professor!
What I have just done encourages me enormously. The likeness is perfect — the painting is in its infancy, but I hope to improve it.
I take my model home and go downstairs with my aunt. We have barely taken thirty steps before d'Audiffret joins us — and ten steps further, Chevalier.
So the four of us pass before the Sapogenikoffs' windows, all full of curious heads and devouring eyes. I smile to myself and continue speaking with Chevalier while listening to what d'Audiffret says.
The creature is in a top hat — respectable, in a word, and very handsome. I wonder why he does not always dress like this: in Nice fashion he is common; as a gentleman he is fine.
I ask Chevalier for news of Godard — whether he writes, when he will return, what he is doing. Chevalier answers and begins to smile maliciously — and I, sharper than people think, ask again, then all at once blush, cough as if to hide my blush, and lower my eyes.
— Ah! whatever makes me cough like that — it is Monsieur Godard who is responsible.
— Ah! Mademoiselle, I shall write to him about it — he writes to me that he is
sad, that he misses Nice, that he never thought he would miss it so much — etc. etc. — that is what Chevalier tells me, seeing me so en-Godarded [sic].
How amusing — he is going to think all manner of nonsense and write it to Désiré. I am pleased! I am not so stupid this evening — I laughed and talked and the man did not reduce me to silence. I am more at ease — I would like to be entirely at ease.
My aunt, despite my threefold injunction yesterday, has not invited these fine fellows to our house.
I do not know what hidden reason she has, for with her strange manner she tells me she forgot. This evening I tell her what I think and go in thoroughly vexed. By dint of wearing that detestable expression she will make me undecided and make me think there is truly something behind it.
Near our door, already alone, we see Gioia with her gentleman. She leaned half out of the carriage and turned around at length, looking at me all the while — looking at me as never before. My aunt says it is because someone told her what everyone is saying — starting with her, and quite rightly too.
All this makes me laugh — and I enjoy giving credence to this ill report.
I believe Olga is thoroughly caught, smitten, as Fiouloulou would say: for four hours on end she has not stopped chattering about the man — what he did, what he said, how many times he walked along the Promenade, how he was dressed. And she is flushed and animated in telling it. Poor girl!
She amuses me, because her conversation interests me — and then, laughing together and affecting airs of indifference and mockery, we go from time to time to see what is happening up on the hill, up, up there, under the pretext of looking at Léonie's work: we stand behind her at the window and then run back to my room and burst out laughing.
Listen to what I am going to tell you — you who will never read this journal. I have gone too far in imagination and in reality to retreat. I have thought too much, written too much, laughed too much, said too much, made too many follies over this man to leave him in peace. His indifferent air enrages me, wounds my pride. I want this man — I want him — I must have him! If I were to suffer the pain and supreme humiliation of not having him now — well then, I would take him later, and in an entirely different way than now.
But later it would be a humiliation — he would not have wanted me as a wife (I would never consent, but he can desire, can he not?) and he will take me out of pity — later, when one takes anyone at all — a married woman is no burden, and one can take her without loving her.
Oh! but if I were reduced to waiting for that time, I would rebuff him ignominiously — and would not... well... how can I say it... and neither..., no matter... and would not... except after having reduced him to despair, I would drive him to the pistol — and only then could I, without fear of humiliating myself. Ah! I am amusing!
Oh! how wretched one is when one thinks so expansively and has nothing!
Kill me if you will — but you will not make me see reason, and until the age of seventy I shall go on hoping. Within me there are two selves: one that says yes and another that says no. From this continual struggle of my two selves it results that I do not know what to think — for it seems incredible to me that all this should burst like a soap bubble. I have made plans — they cannot simply go to the devil!
In short, the first self says there will be something, and the second self says the first is a fool and a dunce.
It is self no. 1 who speaks. She says that the man, while affecting to be with me as with everyone else, is not as he is with everyone else — that he has an air one should not mistake — that while speaking to others he speaks to me, and in speaking to me he takes a particular tone, low and serious. In short: that he is an immense poseur, a rake — but that he is more interested in me than he thinks, and that it will end as I wish.
The speech of self no. 2 is shorter, cleaner, more expressive: she says I am a fool; that it is pitiable and presumptuous and ugly to imagine things. That they do not exist — that nothing will happen — and that one must keep still.
One will easily understand the embarrassment of my whole self, having seen the dissension that reigns among my parts. One day I incline towards one, another day towards the other. At any rate it must end — [words blacked out] — I would be curious to know which will prevail: no. 1? no. 2? Which of the two.
Come — we shall see. I shall see well enough afterwards. And then I leave for Rome, and I am very much afraid that all this will end with that departure.
Dash it all! It would be more galling than one thinks — more galling than I myself think — and above all, later, it will be a blot on my life that I shall remember only with shame!

Notes

"En gentleman" is in English in the original. ↩