Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 21 January 1876

[Two lines cancelled]
"You are requested to deliver this letter to the wretched Émile. Health and Brotherhood. Dom Fabrice.
Wretched body! I have always told you that the one who has just decamped was nothing but a Don Quixote — with this difference, that Don Quixote had Rocinante, whereas your friend had for his only mount a vile cockerel — and that vile cockerel is you. It is true that you let yourself be manoeuvred more docilely than an ass would have done. Poor imbecile! Dom Fabrice."
I wrote this to Saetone because my aunt tells us that the Comte de Tournon has fled Nice. He had a heated argument about Russia with a Russian, at the club; this Russian challenged him to a duel, and Tournon made his apologies and fled Nice. Soroka and Belle-de-Jour were his seconds.
The weather is grey today. We go to visit the Pantheon; the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, which is more than beautiful; and the church of Santa Croce, less remarkable by comparison but interesting on account of the chapel where, by the saying of a mass, a soul is delivered from purgatory according to the bull of Gregory XIII, and on account of Saint Helena, fragments of the True Cross, and the earth of Jerusalem laid in the foundations of the church.
Then we go to see the Scala Santa — the twenty-eight marble steps from the house of Pilate, which have been covered with wood to preserve them better.
I did not know what to do — but everyone fell to their knees, and I did as everyone did.
By the third step I was no longer laughing — I prayed with all my strength, reciting a prayer and pausing at each step not to rest but because everyone did so. At the top of the staircase, through a grille, one sees a gilded altar all lit by small trembling lights; above this grille one reads the words: Vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras, attritus est propter scelera nostra. Then one descends by two lateral stairways, descending in the ordinary manner.
I have climbed twenty-eight steps on my knees — and I boast of it, miserable creature, while Jesus climbed the same stairs... How did I dare touch that staircase. But I prayed so fervently — for everything, and even for revenge with the Surprising One.
To reach Santa Croce one passes through a completely deserted quarter and sees ruins of ancient walls. I adore ancient ruins — these small bricks enchant me by the way they are arranged.
[I see it every] day — the Colosseum — and I never have enough of it.
But it grows dark — I go to a bookshop to buy some photographs and Childe Harold.
I am going to have a dress made like that of Dante's Beatrice.
On returning home, the doorman hands us the cards of the Baron and Baroness Ixhull, and that of Monseigneur de Falloux: "Monseigneur came in person." And Monseigneur has left a letter of audience for the Vatican. Tomorrow at a quarter to twelve.
I am so delighted that I cannot eat a thing. But I have no black dress! Quickly I take one of Maman's gowns through Caroline and in one hour remake the bodice. And to think that Caroline is going to send me one in a few days! I was not expecting to go tomorrow — no matter; I am happy and content. I shall see Pius IX!
God — how I thank You! I am going to write to Mme de Mouzay — it is to de Falloux that I owe this, and it is to her that I owe knowing de Falloux.
I still cannot believe that tomorrow I shall go to the Vatican — so prepared am I for disappointments — and yet the letter of audience is there.

Notes

Don Quixote: Cervantes' deluded knight who charges at windmills; invoked as a figure of absurd misplaced courage. ↩
Rocinante (Rossinante in French): Don Quixote's decrepit horse; replacing it with a "vile cockerel" (vil coq) heightens the insult — and "vil coq" is also a pun on Audiffret's name (coq = cock, cockerel). ↩
"Au cercle" — at the gentleman's club; in Nice these were the Cercle de la Méditerranée and the Cercle Masséna, mentioned in earlier entries. ↩
"Belle-de-Jour" — "Day Beauty" or Morning Glory: Marie's nickname for another figure in her Nice circle, identity unclear. ↩
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme: one of the seven pilgrimage churches of Rome, founded by Saint Helena, mother of Constantine; reputed to contain relics of the Passion including nails from the Cross and a fragment of the inscription INRI. ↩
The Bull of Gregory XIII (1580): granting indulgences to those who said or heard Mass at the Gregorian chapel in Santa Croce, associated with the deliverance of a soul from purgatory. ↩
The True Cross: the cross on which Christ was crucified; Saint Helena was believed to have discovered it in Jerusalem in the 4th century. Santa Croce was built to house her relics. ↩
The Scala Santa (Holy Stairs): twenty-eight marble steps believed to have been those of the Praetorium in Jerusalem where Jesus stood before Pilate; brought to Rome by Saint Helena. Pilgrims ascend them on their knees. ↩
Vulneratus est propter iniquitates nostras, attritus est propter scelera nostra (Latin): "He was wounded for our transgressions; he was bruised for our sins" — Isaiah 53:5 (Vulgate), the Suffering Servant prophecy applied to Christ's Passion. ↩
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage: Byron's great Romantic poem (1812–1818), the third and fourth cantos of which are set largely in Italy; a natural purchase in Rome for a young person of Marie's sensibility. ↩
Dante's Beatrice: in Dante's La Vita Nuova and Divina Commedia, Beatrice Portinari appears in a crimson dress; Marie's interest in classical costume is consistent with her contempt for contemporary fashion. ↩
A black dress was the required dress for women attending a papal audience. ↩
Pope Pius IX (Giovanni Maria Mastai Ferretti, 1792–1878), reigned 1846–1878 — the longest pontificate in history. Since the seizure of the Papal States in 1870, he had declared himself the "prisoner of the Vatican" and refused to leave its precincts. ↩