Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 24 July 1876

Ah!
My aunt was out; I was reading downstairs in the hotel salon, and the idea came to me to go up — I go up, I find this letter from Mouzay. I did not know how long it had been there, but on the off chance I rushed to the Countess's rooms, and at the moment I was mounting the last step of the staircase, two gentlemen were coming out of the salon.
"Ah! it is Mousse," said Mme de Mouzay.
"Yes, it is I."
"Come in then! Come back, gentlemen."
I sat down on the sofa, quite out of breath, after I had been introduced to MM. Paul de Cassagnac and Blanc.
Mme de Mouzay introduced me to Paul de Cassagnac. He is very tall, dark, with black hair and Italian eyes; he would be handsome were it not for a slight corpulence... how to say... [words crossed out] and a certain contraction of the mouth that distorts features which are by nature regular and noble.
He looked at me with the most careful attention.
"Mademoiselle," he said at last, slowly, "I go straight to the point — often even bluntly — but take it as you will. You expressed a desire to know me; many people have done the same, but I did not comply. And if I had simply been told that you were a young girl... pretty, graceful, witty... I should not have come — that does not move me, no! But what I was told about you inspired in me the most lively desire to know you. A great curiosity. I was told that you resembled no one else..."
"They spoke of nothing but you, monster!" the Countess interrupted.
"An individuality altogether apart," Cassagnac continued.
"I am sure," I said, "that the Countess has spoken too well of me, and I am sorry for it, as you may perhaps be disappointed in your expectation."
"I make no pronouncement, Mademoiselle — one cannot judge after a few still-stilted phrases, but I hope to have the honour of knowing you better, and then..."
I was assai agitated and spoke little, wishing to speak only well.
"Did you receive my letter?"
"What letter, Madame?"
"Why, the one in which I told you that M. de Cassagnac was with me."
"I received nothing at all, and it is marvellous to arrive at just the moment when..."
"I have always had a great deal of luck," said Cassagnac, "and from the moment I desired something, that thing always came about — mark that well!"
"I wish I could say the same, Monsieur."
"Admire how chance serves me," he continued; "one minute more and we would have been at the foot of the staircase and could not have come back up. So it would have been lost, as you could not get a box for this evening; besides, I dislike arranged introductions — they are cold and commonplace, so I told Madame la Comtesse to write you a little note, which is much simpler."
These first exchanges over, Cassagnac spoke more freely — he spoke of himself as of another, setting forth his qualities, his position, his courage, his pride, his vanity, his ambition, his self-conceit, his ideas on different relationships, on love, on the education of women; posing as Cato, as a Matamore; a Cato tempered by noble gallantry, a Matamore tempered by genuine bravery. Disdaining commonplaces in everything, and posing in such a way that each of his words became a truth, a sincere declaration on his part — to which one could not respond as one does to what young men say, which one could not laugh at, and which one was obliged to believe.
What pleases me in this man is... rather funny, but what pleases me in him is that two people cannot resemble each other morally as much as we resemble each other. While speaking he seemed to be stealing my thoughts. One cannot call him a blagueur, although my caustic nature had that impulse in the first moments, because he says everything too frankly and naturally. He does not boast in speaking well of himself because he speaks of himself as of another, without any appearance of that bad braggadocio of people who affect frankness by profession.
He looked at me as "a subject to be studied."
Mouzay cast her beaming, questioning glances from him to me, seeming to say: Well? What did I tell you?
Blanc, a naval officer of forty but still young-looking, observed us all with his shrewd, somewhat police-like air.
"These ladies leave tomorrow," said Mouzay, "and it is a pity — after all, Mousse... listen, my dear, I have asked these gentlemen, not seeing you come, to come and spend the evening at my house, and you and your aunt would come..."
"I am willing," I said, looking at Cassagnac.
"Then it is settled — these gentlemen will be here this evening."
"I was engaged this evening," said Cassagnac, "but for the pleasure of conversing with Mademoiselle, I shall manage."
I gave a slight bow.
"Madame la Comtesse," said Cassagnac, bowing and kissing her hand.
"Mademoiselle," he said, bowing before me.
I held out my hand and he kissed it.
"This evening at nine o'clock," said Mouzay.
"Yes, Countess," I said, "we shall be with you."
"You hear, gentlemen?" she said.
"I am at Mademoiselle's orders," said Cassagnac, bowing once more in the doorway.
I immediately fell back on the sofa singing Faust.
"Well, I hope you are pleased now? And it is to your old friend you owe it — the one you say you love only in moments and by caprice, monster!"
"Do be quiet," I said, still lying back, "you were dying to know Cassagnac and you are delighted with the pretext — it is you who are in my debt."
Shortly after, my aunt arrived. She would not at first believe that Cassagnac had been introduced, for I told her so while singing and swaying from one end of the room to the other in ecstasy.
"Beauty does not move me," said Cassagnac, with a superb contempt.
That did not prevent me from doing my hair with the most particular care, making it original and characteristically my own, as always. And I put on the blue mules.
On arriving, we found them already there, both in evening dress, as is proper for people of good breeding.
Blanc remained with my aunt, the Baron de Mertens, the Baronne, and a Comte de Boyal, I believe, who is returning from Chislehurst where he had the honour of lunching with the Empress — while I remained seated at the head of the sofa, Mouzay near me and the interesting man opposite. Despite his fourteen duels, his popularity among the lower classes and in the cafés, he has distinguished manners, and it was with perfect ease that he placed a cushion under my feet. And that small attentiveness almost moved me.
"I can be serious, very grave," he said, "but it bores me, and I am certain it would bore you too."
"I daresay it would bore Cassagnac," said Blanc from the other end of the salon — which is very small — looking at him with the air of an old nurse regarding her spoiled and terrible charge.
Suddenly we spoke of spiritism and magnetism — Cassagnac with deep conviction and a mystical gravity. My aunt began to laugh.
"I dislike speaking of these things before the indifferent," he said, and fell silent.
But when the others on that side were absorbed in something else, I resumed the interrupted conversation, and he recounted the most extraordinary things he had seen done and done himself with Blanc. Cassagnac is a magnetist. I told him of my beliefs and what I had witnessed. And since, I repeat, we are so alike in every way, the conversation gradually became easy and almost intimate. I was much less afraid.
"If your conversation bored me," said Cassagnac in response to one of my modest disclaimers, "I would not be here."
And as it was said in that natural way I spoke of this morning, I believed it literally — as I believe everything he says.
It pleases me to understand relations between man and woman other than those of coquetry.
"I understand marriage as Romeo and Juliet understand it," said Cassagnac, "otherwise it is a filthy business. Besides, a man in love is a man overboard."
"You have often fallen in," said Mouzay, "but you are a strong swimmer."
"No, truly, beauty and coquetry leave me cold. What I value, what I should like, is to be able to say to a woman after three, four, six months of acquaintance: there — you please me, I like you greatly; do you feel the same sympathy for me? And if she says yes, one lives in a charming intimacy of action and thought. If someone pleases me I am capable of going to her and saying: look, we are going to live together, or you here and I across from this house. Whereas when a person displeases me I go away and never come back. I could spend six months, a year, living with someone... Ah!" he added, laughing, "but convention — the world is there!"
"Yes, Monsieur — convention, the world: there is the obstacle."
[two lines crossed out]
"I hope I shall never be in love," he said, "for I do not understand love as everyone else does — to begin with, I should be jealous as a tiger!... And then... and then, when one is in love one is good for nothing. So when I see a beautiful woman I immediately distrust myself and look for what is repellent about her, telling myself there must be something! And when I go home and say to myself: here is a dark or fair head that attracts me too much — then, then I forbid myself and withdraw, for a man in love is a man overboard."
"That is true."
Then he said so much, so much, about his character and about love that I thought what Mouzay said aloud!
"Oh that, Monsieur," she said, "but you present yourself in a way that makes one terribly eager to play... and makes one think your conquest more difficult than that of the Golden Fleece!"
"What would one do with it?" he said, almost bitterly. "And what a fleece — a bearskin."
He told us how ambition first came to him. He was nineteen years old and his father had taken him to a ball.
"If there were only men," he said, "ambition would not exist. It is for women: yes, a glance, a handshake — that is our reward, that is our ambition! I was in a corner of the salon, looking at a group of young women — I have always liked to look at what is pretty — and I was observing the effect produced on them by the different names being announced; it was still the fashion to announce then. When the name of a great financier was called, all those heads bent toward each other, murmuring: here is M. So-and-so, here is M. So-and-so. When a great noble name was announced, a movement went through these women in the same way, then the same thing for a politician. Then!... then rage seized me! And I swore that I too would be something — that at my name the same movement and the same whispers would occur! And when I went home I asked myself: well, my boy, how will you do it? Make millions... quickly? That is not honest. Be a duke? It is too late. And then I decided to become what I am. I began by casting a few great scandals upon the pavement of Paris — for it is like two dogs fighting: everyone goes to the windows. And when I had drawn eyes upon me, I said to myself that now people were looking at me, I had better be able to show them something!"
Mme de Mertens came to us and Cassagnac began recounting his adventures from the war, intermingling the terrible, the melancholy, and the comic. One could make books of it.
I gave myself gladly to the influence of this charming conversation, so entirely new to me — I who have seen no one but people like Galula, for whom I cared little, or like Audiffret, whom I wanted to make a martyr, or like Antonelli, whom I tried to love and above all to respect... a little, without ever managing it despite the best will in the world.
In any case, let us be clear: between Cassagnac and me there is and never will be any question of love.
Although I am whistling to myself while writing this, I am certain of what I say — as regards my own feelings, at least.
I am very proud to have attracted the attention and friendship of a man like Cassagnac, for I am sure I have already both.
Cassagnac and the head of the Bonapartist party — Cassagnac is one of the eminent men of today, for his honesty, his courage, his eloquence, and his immense influence over his people. And if Napoleon IV returns... Gad! Let it not displease him if he ever reads these lines — with all his faults and qualities, with his conceit and his real worth, he seems to me, and he is: a great child of genius.
Mmes de Mouzay and de Mertens gave themselves over to their enthusiasm and laughed, sighed, and listened according to what Cassagnac was saying; as for me, I rationed my marks of approval so that he should feel their worth when I gave them.
We spoke of the sea, of villas, of watering-places.
Cassagnac expressed his disgust for society at the seaside — the sea is a wild element that clashes horribly with everything one generally sees on the coasts.
"And yet," I said, "it is very pleasant to have a house by the sea, and I assure you I am quite happy in my own home, before an open window at night, working or writing, with two candles burning before me — for I find that lights, far from destroying the charm of fine moonlight over a seascape, give it a particular character of its own by contrasting with the silver gleam of the water and the black depth of the trees. And before that open window... one thinks better, one writes better, one is happier than anywhere else, I assure you!"
"You really work... a little for yourself?" asked Cassagnac, with a kind expression of gentleness that strikes one, so to speak, in his dark, even fierce, Creole face.
"Yes," I said, smiling.

Notes

Assai: Italian for "very much" — one of Marie's habitual code-switches into Italian. ↩
Cato: Cato the Elder (234–149 BC), Roman senator known for austere morality and bluntness. ↩
Matamore: the stock braggart soldier of commedia dell'arte — all boast, little substance. ↩
Blagueur: a teller of tall tales, someone who bluffs or talks big without substance. ↩
Police-like: in English in the original. ↩
Cassagnac came from Gascony, with a complexion sometimes described as "Creole" by contemporaries; the word suggests an exotic, dark handsomeness. ↩