Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 17 April 1876

A strange fact. As long as I am happy and cheerful my hair curls beautifully, but the moment I begin to be bored it becomes straight and flat as sticks.
We were to go to Pompeii, but it rained in the morning and rains all day.
Altamura came at around five o'clock; I charged him with finding me two exceedingly small horses — the kind I have seen only in Naples — all white, or white with a tinge of pale pinkish-yellow. I do not know what one calls this colour; I know it is very rare.
According to the fortune-tellings, Pietro is here.
Besides, we shall have news of him tomorrow. We spoke of his confinement to the monastery in Altamura's presence, and Altamura telegraphed this morning to the Marquis Filipani in Rome, enquiring after Antonelli's health.
I read novels and I think. I try to guess the answer to the riddle. I have been searching for it from morning to evening.
Maman comes twenty times to reproach me for my reading. She would like me to be with the others to keep up the conversation or to listen to her grievances. But I shut myself in and am truly like someone in a convent — locked away and reading most of the time. I find nothing to write; I have already recounted my latest regrets, my fears, my suppositions, and unless I am to despair — which would be foolish — or to rejoice and see everything through rose-coloured glass — which would be more foolish still — I have nothing to say. I wait and I am bored; I am bored and I wait.
Yet often the urge comes over me to analyse everything afresh and try to guess... No, no — it is better to stupefy myself by reading; you can see well enough that my mind is far from calm and cheerfulness, and sometimes my chest becomes so oppressed that I would gladly weep. No — one must not make a fuss, as one says in Russian; let us stay in the realm of stupefaction as much as possible.
A dismal realm — but what is one to do?
Suddenly the idea comes to me that he has simply abandoned me. Oh! Then one would have to think that he lied on the last evening — that he lied like the most accomplished scoundrel! No — I am a rogue myself but I can hardly believe in such cowardice. Besides, he had no reason to deceive me.
Come then — why?
Scoundrel, weakling, or victim? There it is.
And if he were merely a thoughtless young man?!
No — look, good people, look at my position: I have let myself be deceived, then; I took empty phrases for truth? No, no, no — I will decide nothing yet. I will say nothing; I would only torment myself and tear my poor soul apart with a thousand doubts as humiliating as they are sad.
God — if only he would come!
But listen to this: Altamura arrives at ten o'clock; unable to cross the drawing room, I go through the corridor to steal cigarettes from Walitsky's room, which adjoins the drawing room. The cigarette case not being unsealed, I am about to tiptoe out when I hear Pietro's name and am rooted to the spot.
— But Antonelli is in Rome, says Altamura.
— But which Antonelli?
— Count Pietro, Madame — I have just received this telegram; here.
— Let us see, says Maman, and she reads the following:
"Napoli, Vincenzo Altamura. Comte Pietro Antonelli è in Roma."
I run to my room and fall onto the sofa. I am cold — I weep. So I was not mistaken — he was sent away, or he had gone away, because of me!
He is in Rome. Since when? Where has he been? He told me nothing of it — he has been lying all this time, and I believed myself loved, and I believed in something in this world. They are quite right to call it the bas monde — our world is indeed low, so low and vile that I am disgusted with it at my age.
When shall I stop believing altogether? When shall I reply to whatever men tell me with a smile of contempt on my lips and cold disgust in my heart?!
Is it possible that there is neither love nor truth, and that these two words exist only in books?
But those who write the books — where did they draw the beautiful things they recount so well?
Let us not confuse Pietro Antonelli with everyone, and not say — love is only a word — just because Pietro Antonelli has dared to make of it only a word.
Let us disillusion ourselves once more. I thought — at last here I am, loved by a man I do not hate; it is the first time — what happiness! Ah! Indeed. Ah! Indeed. Ah! Indeed! I weep and I mock myself.
It is comic and sad. Well then, I cried out mentally — let us go to Rome!
No, my girl — you will stay in Naples; you will go to see Pompeii, you will climb Vesuvius, you will visit the Blue Grotto and the Grotto del Cane, you will admire the museum, you will attend Thursday's races, and you will not leave until Saturday.
What need have you to run after a man? If at least you loved him madly, that might be an excuse — perhaps — but just like that!
I understand your vexation perfectly — and who would not be vexed?
I shall not take a single step. Those who wish may take one for me. Come — ought I to concern myself with a man who, as long as I am before his eyes, courts me, and the moment I am away is perfectly comfortable and does not bestir himself in the least?
Also, I do not concern myself with him as a man, but rather as one vexation more. Had he the face of Pandola, of Zucchini, of Don Alfonso, or of the Odescalchi — it would be the same. I loved him, so to speak, only because he loved me. I am not speaking out of spite and anger. Besides, I have always said the same thing. And I swear to you that the gentlemen I have just named would be no more nor less to me than Pietro, had they made me believe they loved me.
He is free — he is in Rome. But it is useless to think he will come to Naples.
Yet how sad it is to be condemned to boredom as I am!
Far from wishing to leave for Rome, I put it off — for uncertainty may well turn into open affront. Without that, my position is false, and Maman and Dina and Walitsky are commenting on recent events but say nothing, out of delicacy — it would be far more delicate to speak. Besides, I am silent, and they do not begin. I am going to begin this instant.
I return from it and it leads nowhere. One can barely get an answer.
I feel a kind of contentment at the moment. I profoundly despise Antonelli — whether he was deceived or whether he acted deliberately. For it is quite possible that instead of opposing him they told him to leave under some pretext and kept him away until I departed. You see how I incline toward indulgence. What will you — I am clémente. My name should have been Clémence — it would match that of Torlo-nia, that dear drunkard who did not find me to his taste. Is this Torlonia not an idiot. He has thirty thousand francs a year; I would bring him sixty thousand or seventy thousand. That would make a hundred thousand together. Seventy thousand francs in income represents a capital of one million four hundred thousand francs at the legal rate of five per cent. I assure you it is not to be despised. But he did not know. We would be husband and wife — he would certainly mistreat me, but that would be nothing to me. One fine day when I am married I shall tell him all this. We shall laugh about it, and perhaps regret it.
Ah! Good heavens — go to Rome! Ah! Heavens upon heavens — no! I shall prove to you, dear readers who will never, never read this journal — I shall prove that I say a great many foolish things but do far fewer. Here I am at war with the signor cardinalino. May God send me the occasion and I shall fight with dignity.
[Written across the page: Ah! Indeed!]
I wanted to be good — I had not a bad thought, not even the idea of a malicious one — and look! But if he does not love me it is all the same to him; what happened is not his fault, and so my anger has no reason to exist. Let us decide nothing — let us wait. One must not precipitate anything, and even in precipitation one must maintain a certain measure and a certain calculation. Let us not be foolish — let us enjoy Naples, let us do things naturally as if nothing had happened.

Notes

Marie's bibliomancy from the previous evening — she had consulted a novel as oracle and received ten affirmative answers. ↩
"Sa mise au couvent" — literally "putting him in a convent/monastery": Marie's term for Pietro's enforced seclusion, apparently ordered by his powerful family (the Antonellis had Vatican connections through Cardinal Antonelli). It is unclear whether this was a literal religious retreat or merely a metaphor for being kept away. ↩
"Faire d'histoire" — from the Russian delat' istoriyu (делать историю), meaning to make a scene or a fuss. Marie code-switches to characterize her own emotional excess using a Russian idiom, distancing herself from it slightly. ↩
"Je suis une canaille" — an odd self-deprecating admission: Marie acknowledges she is herself capable of duplicity. The admission undercuts her indignation and shows her characteristic self-awareness. ↩
The telegram is in Italian: "Naples, Vincenzo Altamura. Count Pietro Antonelli is in Rome." — Mixed French and Italian, as telegrams of the period often were on the Italian–French circuit. ↩
Bas monde — literally "low world" or "base world": a term for the morally corrupt human world, as opposed to the divine or the ideal. Marie is playing on the double meaning: society (le monde) is also the bas monde (the ignoble world). ↩
Blue Grotto (Grotte d'Azur) — the famous sea cave on the island of Capri, known for its brilliant blue light caused by sunlight entering through an underwater aperture. A must-see for tourists on the Bay of Naples. ↩
Grotto del Cane (Grotte du Chien) — a cave near Naples famous for the carbon dioxide gas seeping from the floor, which could asphyxiate a small dog but not an upright human. A macabre tourist attraction since antiquity. ↩
Clémente — Marie's pun: she is clémente (merciful/clement), which also echoes the name Clémence, which would be the feminine counterpart to Torlonia's first name (presumably Clemente). The wordplay on clemency and names is noted in the LAN annotation. ↩
Signor cardinalino — Italian: "little cardinal gentleman" (diminutive, mocking). A dig at Pietro Antonelli's family connection to Cardinal Giacomo Antonelli, the powerful Vatican Secretary of State under Pius IX. ↩