Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday 17 March 1876

The cheek kissed by the bold son of a priest still tingles. What audacity! The more I think of it, the more angry I am. Supposing I do not marry him — which is more than probable — I am now defiled. Defiled, certainly — since a man other than my husband has touched me with his lips. Subtleties! Well — every honest soul should understand such subtleties.
Besides, I do not boast of this feeling — it is produced by selfishness. I abstain from things that are supposed to give pleasure not from a sense of duty, but because they displease me supremely and would leave me with a very disagreeable and unclean impression.
Torlonia keeps running through my head. His hair on his brow and his beard full of wilfulness and insolence beneath a baby’s mouth — they occupy me more than one might think.
The weather was bad; nothing particular at the promenade.
I was undressed and reading when Botkine and Plowden arrived. I had no great desire to go to the salon, but I went — and Antonelli arrived immediately, at which Plowden was not pleased.
written across the page
What is exceedingly curious is that Antonelli, almost as soon as he was introduced to me, slightly displeased me. Then I found him charming until the day he made his declarations. From that moment — and this is where the curious part begins — he displeased me greatly, but I hid this from myself.
I am lazy about speaking of Pietro. He is mine — there is therefore nothing, or very little, to say. He spoke of Torlonia, and while praising him said that Torlonia was not rich and had so lively a temper that one could not spend twenty-four hours with him without quarrelling several times. He did not say it out of malice — he is incapable of it. He has reconciled with his father and had with him a conversation on a very serious subject — with a glance in my direction. He asserts that he is to inherit from the Cardinal, and other things besides.
Botkine and Plowden have been gone a long time, and Pietro still stays.
We play at fortune-telling. I am the clairvoyant, Dina the mesmerist, and Pietro the consultant. I tell him a heap of nonsense while he gently presses my hand, which makes me shiver, one knows not why — for I do not love him, poor soul!
Mme Lwoff called this afternoon, but I did not show myself — I was tired, and somewhat agitated by last night’s conversation with piano accompaniment.
Torlonia is too much in demand to have time to spend his evenings with us; Pietro does not go everywhere as he does.
Having broken away barely two months ago from the clericals — or blacks — he is not yet white.

Notes

“Son of a priest” — Pietro Antonelli was the nephew of Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, the powerful Secretary of State to Pope Pius IX, who was widely rumoured in Roman society to have had illegitimate children. Marie means that Pietro is (rumoured to be) the Cardinal’s natural son. ↩
“Written across the page” (en travers) — a marginal note written across the page at right angles to the main text, a device Marie occasionally uses for afterthoughts and self-analysis. ↩
Pietro claims he will inherit from Cardinal Antonelli — a significant financial claim, given the Cardinal’s immense personal fortune. (Cardinal Antonelli died in November 1876; his fortune went to his brothers and their families, and the will was contested by Countess Loreta Marconi Lambertini, who claimed to be his natural daughter, a famous lawsuit she lost. Sources: Treccani, Dizionario Biografico, «Antonelli, Giacomo»; it.wikisource, «Roma italiana, 1870-1895 / Il 1876».) ↩
In French in the original: à la somnambule (a somnambule was a trance medium, consulted about the future and lost things). ↩
In French in the original: cléricaux. ↩
Rome’s aristocracy was divided into noirs (blacks) — the clerical/papal party who boycotted the Italian state — and bianchi (whites) — those who accepted the new unified Italy. Pietro Antonelli, nephew of the papal Secretary of State (still alive in 1876; he died that November), was only recently crossing from one camp to the other. ↩