Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 5 November 1875

What did the cards tell me!
Ice! Zero degrees. Good Lord!
I was too calm yesterday — and here it is, this rage that would not come!
I was not furious — I am furious now, be assured of it!
My people, who have gone out before me, inform me that Audiffret is promenading in a two-wheeled carriage with livery and so forth. But so much has this young man chilled and discouraged me that I make no haste.
And indeed I see him driving his little carriage from last year.
I am on foot; my aunt grows animated — I do not stir. One is sure of nothing.
"There is Girofla," she says, "coming on foot to meet us."
"Oh, my God, how terribly I shall blush."
I did not blush — and he passed us, saluting for a second time but without stopping. There is a genuine thunderbolt! No one can imagine my anger, my confusion. Oh! I am so offended!
My aunt ventures a few jokes about the livery and the horse and the top hat, to which I reply without affectation. I felt as though jumping into the sea from a bridge. Cold, fear!
[One line cancelled]
Maman draws up beside us in the carriage, but my aunt begs me to keep walking, having caught sight of the Surprising One in the distance. But the Surprising One passes as he did the first time.
"He does not come toward us!" says my aunt.
"And you make me walk so that he will approach," I answer. "It is useless — he will not approach!"
The carriage comes back again and again one sees the man approaching in the distance — but this time I open the door and climb in quickly. I did not want a third humiliation!
I said nothing, for I felt I would weep if I spoke.
"Ah — but," I cried at last, answering them all at once, "will you please stop your excuses and your soothing commentaries! Ah — if it were not for you, how peaceful I would be."
But — oh wonder — here comes Nina on the Promenade with Giroflé, Giroflé imitating my bearing and my manner of saluting.
"Good," I say; "there are two more hunting the Girofla!"
And we walk up and down to observe the transit of Venus before the sun. Fortunately — most fortunately — Venus does not attract the sun, and all goes well. Well for me — not for that unfortunate girl who had drawn herself up to her full height, put on her most superb air, and with hands folded at her waist, was waiting.
"Ah, how comical it was!"
"Will you stop your nonsense, Madame?" I cried. "Why all this rushing about! And those looks you give me! That is what torments me — your sidelong glances, your commentaries!"
[One line cancelled: I go up to Nina's.]
"There is nothing extraordinary in it," replied Maman; "I have never from the beginning regarded Audiffret as a suitable match — but since he has made our acquaintance, since he comes to see us, it is quite natural that I prefer to see him, preferring him to the others."
We go up to Nina's; that good woman annoyed and amused me at the same time.
"The first thing to be done in Rome," says Maman, "is to find singing and painting teachers."
"Yes," I say, "and I shall begin going to the galleries."
"But whatever will you do in the galleries!" said Nina.
"Why — copy, and study!"
"Oh! But you are so far from that," she says, with conviction.
You hear her — this foolish woman judges me thus. But ah! I care nothing for it. Every mother has her weaknesses and her blindnesses.
I was burning to go home.
I am supremely bored, offended, grieved!
The abominable spectre, the abomination, the poison of everything — the dreadful serpent — came back to my mind! That abhorred man whose name by superstition I will not write. That disgusting man, that abominable baron, who spoils everything for me, who poisons all my thoughts!
"Beware — this could be like the other..." — that infernal voice that always cries the same thing to me! Oh! No — my God — here it will not be like that; this one resembles the other horror in nothing! Great God, make me forget him!
I will speak of it no more — I will never speak of it again! While writing I lay out the cards from time to time; four aces have come up —
"Who knows," says Maman; "perhaps someone has told him that it is we who are so taken with him — for the Sapogenikoffs talk with all the servants and gather intelligence everywhere, and perhaps they tell him that it is we. And then there is this talk of marriage — he does not wish to give it credence, and throws cold water."
It is true — yes, cold; this chill, this moral ice, makes me cold physically.
"He is very handsome," adds my Mother.
"Yes — very handsome," repeated my aunt.
"The devil take you both," thought their daughter, "why tell me what I know, and keep alive in me thoughts that ought to be driven out in shame!"
They are giving Barbe-bleue; he is at the theatre.
Whether I love him or not — it matters little! But it matters very much that everything concerning him matters to me. It is truly wretched to have a tender heart! I think and rethink everything from the beginning. I am more superstitious than ever, and I shudder at the sight of the happy cards — the cards that predict what I desire so very, very much!
Again someone rings — it is half past ten, and mad creature that I am, I throw myself into the corridor and look down, trembling all over, and in vain! There — now I picture him at the theatre; with eyes closed I see him, and my heart beats and I am ready to weep.
Look — the Queen of Diamonds has just fallen on the heart of the King of Clubs, and I smile and I am happy! Even if he loved me he could never think of me as much as I think of him.
For he has a host of occupations — he gambles, he has an entire retinue about him, he goes everywhere — while I, hidden away, alone for nearly the whole day, order my whole life by the movements of the person who occupies me; I think of no one else, I do everything for that one person, I live only through that person. Understand how tormentable a character like mine is! At the smallest things I fall from the heights to the depths, I see everything in black, I despair, I weep! If the cards say he loves me, I would leap about like a madwoman! Several times this evening they have said it — ah, if one could then see into my heart!
Oh! They have just told me a heap of pleasant things and I am quite cheered and revived.
At each chilling he seems to me a great prince — his every act appears full of nobility and majesty.
I am nothing but a madwoman.
My humour is more changeable than the wind.
Today everything is black — I weep for everything: for Rome, for Girofla, for everything! I abase myself, I love, I roll in the mud!
Detestable character!
So irresolute, so wretched am I! What the cards say, one cannot believe — today I have laid them out more than a hundred times.
No, no, no — everything fails me, everything fails me! Mad creature, mad creature, mad creature — do you not see that you are cursed in the smallest things? For a mere flirtation, for what every woman has without asking, I roll on the floor, I pray to God!
God who does not hear me! Is it so extraordinary a thing that a young man should fall in love with a girl — that I must implore Him on my knees, with tears!
What puts me in a fury — what makes me rage — is that for such a trifle I plunge into tragedy, while he is not even thinking of it, and at this very moment is perhaps applauding some comic song or making faces with la Prodgers, caring no more about me than if I did not exist!
Why does one love others!
It is because other women are loved — because they have admirers without asking God for them — that I rage, that I am furious!
La Robenson — that sharp-featured American — does not even pronounce the name of God, does not know what it is to pray with one's whole soul, to speak to God, to be exalted, to be in ecstasy as I am — and that man loved her, and said it was a "holy" affair.
I beg you — do not take these reflections for love; take them for what they are, put yourself in my place and you will understand me and speak as I do! All the more so since I never deny it when I love — I love. Nor do I deceive myself; I see, unfortunately, too clearly!
Put yourself in my place and you will understand my vexation, my wounded pride. To ask for the simplest, the most ordinary of things — to have asked for it as a favour, as a happiness, for so long — to believe in God, to pray to Him, and to receive nothing.
Very well — I can see from here the people who mock me for mixing God into everything.
Mock away — but if you were in my place you would be as furious as I am! When I asked, as a little girl of thirteen, to be loved by the Duke of Hamilton — to make him abandon Gioia — then I was asking far too much. But now!
What do I ask?
To please Audiffret — a Niçois man-about-town! But such a thing should not even need to be asked for!
So many are the difficulties that I imagine him to be a prince — and his conquest seems to me as arduous as that of a kingdom. The dirtiest thing, by resisting, acquires value!
What is curious is that from the very first moment — when he was introduced to us on the beach — I regarded him as an enemy. He and I seemed to me then like two adversaries finally brought face to face and ready to fight. That was my first feeling. And I was not wrong! Oh! Rage, fury — impossible to imagine!
Oh! My God!
Impossible to leave — the money has not yet arrived. Do you know a more real, more disgusting, more powerful obstacle than that?
There are moments when I doubt everything — when everything seems dreadful to me!
My wretched character gives importance to everything — am I not now going to recall a host of things and make events of them, and compare, and regret!

Notes

Livrée — livery: uniformed servants attending the carriage; a public display of wealth and status. ↩
Un coup de tonnerre — a thunderclap; a sudden, devastating blow. After weeks of intimate evenings, this public snub is devastating. ↩
Marie's sensation: not of calm resignation but the cold, vertiginous shock of a social fall — as physical as jumping from a bridge into icy water. ↩
Le passage de Vénus devant le soleil — an astronomical metaphor: Olga (Venus) passing before Audiffret (the sun). Marie watches to see whether the planet will attract the star. ↩
The "abominable baron" — a traumatic figure from Marie's past, apparently connected to an episode at Spa described in earlier carnets. She refuses to write his name out of superstition. The trauma resurfaces whenever she feels vulnerable in her current romantic situation. ↩
Barbe-bleue — Bluebeard; probably Offenbach's comic operetta Barbe-bleue (1866), a burlesque of the fairy tale. ↩
Bataclan — Marie's term for Audiffret's entourage of hangers-on. ↩
Tourmentable — Marie's coinage: capable of being tormented; susceptible to torment. ↩
Je me roule dans la boue — I roll in the mud: Marie's image of self-abasement, wallowing in emotional degradation. ↩
Pointue — "the Pointed One": Marie's contemptuous nickname, likely for sharp features. ↩
The Duke of Hamilton (1845–1895): Marie's grand girlhood infatuation, whom she had wanted to make abandon his mistress Gioia. Now at seventeen she asks only to attract a Niçois playboy. ↩
Un viveur niçois — a Niçois pleasure-seeker, a man of dissolute habits. Marie uses the word contemptuously to diminish the object of her obsession. ↩