Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 10 January 1876

I spent two hours weeping in the evening — I do not know if I shall be able to give a proper account.
We had called on Monseigneur de Falloux, but he has not left his bed for twenty days and was unable to receive us. We waited five minutes in a magnificent drawing room of the Palazzo Ruspoli, full of antiquities and art objects. Monseigneur sent word asking us to leave our address and promised to call on us as soon as he had recovered.
From there we went in search of Comtesse Antonelli — but she has left Rome these ten days.
And finally we go to the Vatican. I have never seen great personages at close quarters, and never knew how one ought to approach them — yet my instinct told me we were not going about it as one should.
Just think — Cardinal Antonelli, the pope in fact if not in name, the mainspring that drove the whole papal machinery and still sustains it today!
We arrive with sublime confidence under the right-hand colonnade; not without some difficulty I push through the crowd of guides surrounding us; and at the foot of the staircase I address the first soldier I find and ask for His Eminence. This soldier sends me to his superior, who gives us another soldier rather oddly dressed, who leads us up four enormous marble staircases of different colours — and we arrive at last in a square courtyard which, being wholly unexpected, impresses me greatly.
I had not imagined such a courtyard inside any palace whatsoever, even though I knew from descriptions what the Vatican was.
Seeing this immensity, I would not wish to see the popes destroyed — they are already great for having created so fine a grandeur, and worthy of honour for having devoted their lives, their power, and their gold to leaving posterity this astounding colossus that is called the Vatican.
In this courtyard we find ordinary soldiers, an officer, and two guards dressed like playing-card knaves. I ask again for His Eminence; the officer politely requests my name, I write it down, it is carried away, and we wait. I wait, all the while admiring our absurd escapade.
— We are not even properly dressed, observes Dina.
— Bah! I say — that wretched priest will pay no attention to it.
— You think so? Well, no — he must be like Galula.
Do you see Galula beside Antonelli?
[Words blacked out: The man comes running]
The officer tells me that the hour is most ill-chosen, that the Cardinal is at table and will in all probability be unable to receive anyone. Indeed the man returns and informs us that His Eminence has just withdrawn to his apartments and cannot receive visitors as he is somewhat indisposed — but that if we would be so good as to leave the letter below and return tomorrow morning, he will probably receive us.
I leave the letter with a Swiss Guard seated in a kind of box, who, seeing a countess's coronet on the envelope, makes me a deep bow — and we depart, laughing all the while at our little visit to Cardinal Antonelli.
After that we go to three or four teachers. What staircases! What rooms! What smells! Good God! I asked for signor so-and-so, all the while recoiling in horror from the dreadful creatures one was obliged to address.
It rains, the streets are filthy; going up and down ten times — I am discouraged, bored; I miss Nice and the maestro Bregozzo.
We are here as if in a forest!
I am seventeen! Everyone has a place, a villa where they are at home — we alone have nothing! To study, that is very well — let us study — but one must also go into society. I am dying of being shut in, of seeing all pleasures, all amusements, all greatness pass me by!
Ah! If one could form any idea of my torment!
Maman spoke of Nice, and I have learnt something new. The other day, when Barnola asked if it was true that I was to be married, he told Maman that there had been a conversation at the Francias' — I was the subject of this conversation. It was said that I was a dreadful coquette, so young and yet so worldly. Ricardo, while praising me to my mother, said I had a great many enemies.
— Oh! says Maman — not her, perhaps us, but her!
— No, Madame — not you, but her; personal enemies — the Boutowskys. And all manner of things about Mademoiselle Marie were told to the prefect's wife.
I am thunderstruck! Upon my word of honour! The Boutowskys, whom I do not know, to whom I have never spoken! The Francias, the prefect's wife! All these people who tear me to pieces, who slander me! All these people who do not know me!
When I used to watch them pass by in their carriages it seemed to me that they ignored me entirely.
They occupy themselves with me — and maliciously! Does anyone remember poor Abramovitch, who died three years ago? He too witnessed a character assassination of me at the consul's house, and said: "I took your defence." I was thirteen and a half!
Four years ago I was twelve and a half, and Patton was already telling Maman that I went to the Promenade to show off my little foot. Good God! Is it my fault if I am well formed, or if I have a small foot?
Oh! I remember now the looks of all those women — the Buenos, d'Auzac, Decrais, Francia! And I who said to myself of each one:
— She looks at me with kind eyes — perhaps I please her — I love her!
But what have I done to them!
In one sense it is consoling — if I were ugly I would not be noticed. Yes, that is it: I am pretty and elegant, other women do not like that — but it would be nothing if I were part of their nest of vipers [sic], but I stand apart, to one side — it is very easy to crush me, to slander me. I am outside everything; an atrocious position — neither a young lady of society, nor a peasant, nor a streetwalker.
And all those people have connections everywhere, and my mangled name passes from mouth to mouth, and I am made abominably notorious! Before I have even seen this world I cry out for, before I have attained it. An isolated, rejected creature — unprotected — who dares to be pretty, who dares to be the most elegant, who dares always to be dressed like no one else while remaining simple! Let us spit on her — that's it! My God, I do not blame them — I would no doubt do as much in their place.
Only I cannot help despairing over my dreadful fate! Everyone is against me — before knowing what I am! Or whether I have a small foot.
Everyone speaks ill of me! Everything is hostile to me! Why?
Is it because I wanted to love everyone?
And they concern themselves with me, they talk a great deal about me, I am a person of consequence — and they slander me!
That is why they all stared at me in Nice!
And I who thought I was looked at approvingly! They stared at me only to besmirch me, to slander me infamously! I who have never done them any harm!
And all those people have connections everywhere, and my mangled name passes from mouth to mouth, and I am made abominably notorious! Before I have even seen this world I cry out for, before I have known it, I am basely slandered by it.
How then do you expect me to have good intentions, how do you expect me not to be embittered against them, how do you expect me not to weep all my tears!
[Crossed out: When] I used to despise misanthropes — I said they were wicked men, idiots who saw everything in black. If the gloomiest of them began so early as I to receive the charming pleasures of his fellow creatures, I no longer wonder at anything. How is one not to detest people one wishes to love, and who, without knowing you, without knowing what you are, slander you, blacken your reputation, turn their backs on you!
It is curious. Everyone against me — no longer against us but against me!
What is to be done? Weep — try to gain the favour of those who despise me? I do not feel I have the character of Diogenes, and a supreme contempt for all things is not in my nature. Then to hurl myself against my idiotic persecutors, alone against everyone... No — I would rather dash my brains out!
And God? God does not give a damn about one grain of sand more or less in His immense hourglass! My death will mean nothing to Him, since my pain does not touch Him — since He sees me night and day dissolving in tears, since He sees at every moment a Christian soul in despair to the point of breaking — and it means nothing to Him!
There is no one as wretched as I, for in the darkness of despair I doubt everything.
What is left for the person who believes in nothing!
My God, take these thoughts from me — make me believe in You, in Your Son, and in the Virgin Mary! My God, take pity on me — My God, show Yourself merciful!
Holy Mary, pray to God for me! Jesus, pray to God for me!
God! God! God — have pity on me, forgive me!
I remember my dream — here it is: I was at the theatre, in a ground-floor box facing the stage; in the first box to the left was Nadinka, Alexandre's wife. Someone gave me a whole bundle of new chemises and drawers and told me to go and take them to her. Beside her was Audiffret; he barely greeted me — I extended my hand, and he extended his, but his [hand] was small, red, and crooked.
All of a sudden I remember having wrung Barnola's neck and thrown his head into a basin — but the drain is grated, the head remains in the basin; I beg to be let go, they hold me back; at last I run with Dina, who manages to make this head disappear. And on her door I see another head — unknown to me — also severed from its trunk, and dead.
Then I see the Promenade des Anglais, and the sea is entirely covered with black magpies; I was watching these magpies when they all began beating their wings:
— What is happening? I asked.
— It is, I was told, that they are all caught in an immense net.
I was surprised that the birds did not fly away, being caught only from below. As the net was drawn in, the magpies were brought nearer to the shore, beating their wings terribly, and the empty space left by them filled with little white swans whose necks were magnificently lit by the sun.
I was still admiring these new birds when, close to the shore, there passed — two by two and swift as arrows — people dressed in white, on white velocipedes, which, while being driven by the feet of these people, were also each drawn by two ravishing little white horses running on the surface of the water.
There now, I thought — I believed nothing could surprise me any more, and yet look at this!
It is a strange dream, is it not? I should like a Joseph to explain to me these black magpies and white swans, and these white horses running on the sea.

Notes

Monseigneur de Falloux: Frédéric de Falloux (1811–1886), Catholic legitimist politician and writer, a prominent figure in Roman Catholic circles in Rome. ↩
Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli (1806–1876), Papal Secretary of State under Pius IX, widely regarded as the real power behind the papacy. ↩
The Swiss Guards of the Vatican are famous for their distinctive striped yellow and blue uniforms, designed (according to tradition) by Michelangelo. ↩
"Un Suisse" — a Swiss Guard; the Pope's personal bodyguard corps, recruited exclusively from Switzerland since the 16th century. ↩
Coquette: in the 1870s, a woman who deliberately attracted and toyed with men's affections; a considerably stronger term than the modern English use. ↩
Unprotected — in English in the original. ↩
Diogenes of Sinope (c. 412–323 BC), Cynic philosopher who rejected social conventions and lived with supreme indifference to worldly opinion. ↩
Velocipede: an early form of bicycle, the fashionable term in the 1870s. ↩
An allusion to Joseph in Genesis 41, who interpreted Pharaoh's dreams. Marie wishes for a dream-interpreter. ↩