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Friday, 26 May 1876

# Vendredi, 26 mai 1876

I went out this morning and posted my letter — or rather my flower.

Je suis sortie ce matin et j'ai mis ma lettre ou plutôt ma fleur à la poste.

"Antonelli is nothing but a…" — I suppress the word my aunt used, for she is fond of such words. "For," she continued, "he is nothing but a child."

— Antonelli n'est qu'un... je supprime le mot qu'a dit ma tante, elle aime ces mots-là. Car, continua-t-elle il n'est qu'un enfant.

"Oh! That is true," said Maman; "they get everything from him. They make him fast for three days, give him not a penny, and dictate the law to him."

— Oh ! ça c'est vrai, dit maman, ils obtiennent tout de lui. Ils le font jeûner pendant trois jours, ne lui donnent pas le sou et lui dictent la loi.

Well! There is something to make me furious — without meaning to, I know.

Bon ! Voilà quelque chose pour me faire rager, sans le vouloir, je sais.

Those words, perfectly true, make it abundantly clear to me that I have dirtied myself for nothing. For I have dirtied myself — without love and without advantage! It is vexing. No person in the world is more sensitive¹ than I am. Since my face and my lips have been touched I feel soiled — as though after twenty-four hours of railway travel.

Ces paroles, parfaitement vraies, me démontrent clairement que je me suis salie pour rien. Car enfin je me suis salie. Sans amour et sans intérêt ! C'est vexant. Nulle personne au monde n'est plus sensitive que moi. Depuis que ma figure et mes lèvres sont souillées je me sens sale comme après vingt-quatre heures de voyage en chemin de fer.

Antonelli will have the right to say that I loved him and that I was very unhappy about this broken engagement.² A failed engagement always leaves a stain on a young woman. Everyone will say that we loved each other but that the young man's family would not have me — no one will say that the refusal came from me. We are neither loved enough nor great enough for that.

Antonelli aura le droit de dire que je l'aimais et que j'ai été bien malheureuse de ce mariage manqué. Un mariage manqué est toujours une tache sur la jeune fille. Tout le monde dira que nous nous aimions mais que les parents du jeune homme n'ont pas voulu de moi, personne ne dira que le refus vient de moi. Nous ne sommes ni assez aimés ni assez grands pour cela.

Besides, appearances will give the right to those who say so.

D'ailleurs les apparences donneront raison à ceux qui le diront.

It infuriates me.

Cela m'enrage.

What purpose was served by telling him I loved him, by acting exactly as if it were true? Without those few words of Visconti's I should never have gone so far. Excuses!

Quel intérêt de lui dire que je l'aime, d'agir tout comme si c'était la vérité ? Sans ces quelques paroles de Visconti je n'aurais jamais été si loin. Excuses !

Oh! Young girl — you are very young still!

Ah ! jeune fille, vous êtes bien jeune encore !

Notes

Sensitive: Marie uses the English-influenced Gallicism sensitive (meaning impressionable, susceptible to sensation); kept as "sensitive" in English since it is her own word. ↩

Mariage manqué: a failed or broken engagement — a serious social stigma for a young woman in 19th-century France, as it implied she had been "tried and found wanting" by a family. ↩

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