Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday 5 March 1876

I do not go to church — on account, as always, of those Russians who will make their remarks.
Fear of a visit from Bruschetti drives me out at three o'clock. At the Villa Borghese there is a great race — a man who has undertaken to run forty times around the Piazza di Siena (a large lawn within the park itself) in one hour and five minutes.
A great gathering of people, at the head of which is the ravishing princess.
Since Doria, I greatly admire Marguerite. During
Hamilton I admired Gioia; during Audiffret, Robenson. I think the effect is the opposite for others.
Zucchini! Zucchini is there. Pandola, the enormous deputy, too. And from afar I see approaching — oh! Bruschetti, faugh!
We stop to watch the race. Loebecke approaches. Did I mention that yesterday Maman spoke to him at the Pincio, and that he called on us? He is a good, stout young German, very proper and good-natured.
We could see badly from the carriage, so we got out — myself, Dina, and Walitsky — and followed by Loebecke we make our way over the more-or-less flowering grass toward the Piazza di Siena, which as is well known lies in a hollow, so that all around there are quite substantial terraced steps I would not wish to climb like a staircase. We stop at the edge. Zucchini is there — he makes me laugh. Ever since I learned his story he strikes me as so wretched and pitiable!
Doria — white, immaculate — passes by, well-dressed and very fine… A crowd of others. It reminds me of horse races; all these people strolling on the grass make a very graceful picture.
Bang! I catch sight of my dear cardinalino and turn away to speak to Loebecke, because I feel myself blushing.
"Good day, Mademoiselle," he says on arriving.
"Good day, Monsieur."
These are two people who exist for me independently of each other: Doria and Antonelli.
Doria: majesty, ice, and terror. Antonelli: gaiety, coquetry, and charm.
Antonelli quite visibly pleases me.
[Written across the page: Have I not gone to enough trouble to make myself believe that Antonelli pleased me!]
A little later, Plowden finds us and all six of us amuse ourselves watching the man make his forty circuits. I mentioned that I eat violets, and Plowden and the cardinalino ask me for some; I give them some from my bouquet, and they eat them like two donkeys. Antonelli ended up eating the silk threads I was pulling from my fringe.
A riding party is arranged for tomorrow, out in the countryside, at the Farnesina.
"Very well," I say, "but one must ask if Maman agrees — I cannot decide anything on my own."
"Quite right — I shall come to you this evening, if you will permit, and we shall decide."
"Very well."
The race over, we go toward the carriage; and as Antonelli asks Maman's permission to call, the others are invited too.
In this cheerful, peaceful state I go home — or rather, no: we go to dine at Spillmann's, the elder one, and I find it so bad that I go home anyway.
Loebecke arrived first; we had already been in the drawing room for some time when they announced… faugh! faugh! faugh! faugh! You understand. I throw myself into my room, collapse onto a chair, and cry like a wretch.
Nothing can give any idea of the aversion I feel for that gentleman. Yes — listen — beside him the Polish count seems a positive delight.
One had to go into the drawing room, but one also had to find courage: my bodily disturbances outside the door resembled those of Marguerite in the church scene. At last I came out! It cost me enough, I assure you.
Loebecke gives me a rose;
"It is wilted," I say.
"Do you only like fresh flowers?" asks the horror.
"Yes!"
"Sometimes one likes to keep other flowers."
"Yes, yes."
"You like to change."
"Yes."
"People, too."
Can you believe such presumption! To change people — so I have changed him! Damned beast of the devil!
My aunt writes that she has met Audiffret; he asked after us, and she said she wished to buy his château. He is selling it, he says, because he has had enough of Nice. Desforges says it must be sold to pay his debts. He has quite lost his chic, says my aunt — he cuts a sorry figure. In despair, no doubt, he is courting the Sharp One. But I prefer that to the Olive; besides, via! For here is Antonelli coming in. [Two lines cancelled.] We go to unpack my saddle in the anteroom, and it is there that Plowden finds us all. Bruschetti has brought tickets for tomorrow's opening of Parliament. I do not address a single word to him — I cannot! He has a piteous look, at times desperate, but it is stronger than I. He goes
at last! O Gioia! I am gay and happy again.
Pietro is a charming child; his sudden sallies enchant me. For instance, he brings cards and begs me to play; Plowden also asks to play.
"But one cannot!" cries the fiery priest's son, opening wide his eyes.
"Yes, yes," I say, "one can play with three — it is the same thing."
"The same thing," he says, looking at me as though pricked with a pin — "oh! well really" — and, half-turning his chair, he turns away, pursing his lips and gazing at the ceiling.
In the telling it is nothing. That impertinence is better than a honeyed compliment.
Even as I write, I hear his voice in my ears — I am very much in love with him. I say it as naturally as I feel it. When he goes I am cross; I never have enough of him. It is absurd to go infatuating oneself with people, as I do!
"At least to torment Pietro," says Dina, "be kind to Bruschetti."
"Torment him! I have no wish to do that. To torment, to excite jealousy — faugh! In love it resembles the rouge one puts on one's face. It is vulgar, it is low. One may torment involuntarily, naturally, as it were — but to do it deliberately, faugh! Besides, I am not capable of doing it deliberately; I do not have enough character. Is it possible to go and chat and be agreeable with some monster when the cardinalino is there and one can talk to him?"
That rogue pays assiduous court to Maman, who calls him her dear child. I love to see him so sweet with her. He complained about his parents, who will not let him keep horses because he spent too much when, having run away at seventeen, he enlisted in the army. He will be twenty-three in April.
A child in age and in character.
He is no shorter than the Surprising One.
Ohimè! The Mignon romance touches me only as music; as for the associations, as the English say — requiem si non eterno, at least for now.
I am no longer teased about Audiffret; they speak only of Pietro, and I smile in the way you know.
But in all conscience there must be an answer concerning the holy water and the rings of Saint Peter's chain. Here it is:
The Holy Father refused everything! Cardinal Antonelli has far more weighty occupations than imprisoning one wicked little deeply-corrupted soul. But we have found a method which will give us some peace for a time at least. We have enclosed his soul in a jar filled with alcohol, as one does with monstrous objects of natural history. On that note, farewell — you really ought to become a monk once they have sold your château.
Amen!
The monks of Cimiez.
And there the famous correspondence is finished — or suspended. I have no time to attend to it now.
Who will give me rings capable of chaining the still so unripe soul of him whose patron is Saint Peter! I think of nothing but seeing him again — seeing him ever and always and again.

Notes

This passage is marked as censored in the 1887 edition. ↩
Reference to the church scene in Gounod's opera Faust (1859), Act IV, where Marguerite is tormented by Méphistophélès's voice as she tries to pray. ↩
Via! — Italian: "come now!" or "away with it!" An impatient dismissal. ↩
O Gioia! — Italian: "Oh Joy!" In the original. ↩
Ohimè! — Italian: "Alas!" In the original. ↩
Associations — In English in the original; used in the psychological sense of emotional memories linked to music. ↩
Requiem si non eterno — Latin: "rest, if not eternal" — Marie's sardonic epitaph for her feelings about Audiffret: let those feelings rest, even if not forever. ↩