Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 7 August 1876 (26 July)

"We have nothing original but the Middle Ages" — I said this in the last volume.
We — who? Christians. Has the world in reality been regenerated, or have the same customs, under other colours and names, flowed on as they have flowed since the beginning of the world, tending always toward improvement?
The lives of nations resemble rivers flowing slowly — now over rocks, now over sand, now between mountains, now underground, now through an ocean into which they mingle in their crossing but from which they emerge unchanged, altering their name and even their direction, but only to pursue always the same one — that which is fixed and unknown. By whom?
God or Nature. If God is Nature, we are nothing but imbeciles — Nature has nothing to do with men and their concerns. In philosophy classes the existence of a Supreme Being is proven very adequately by pointing to the mechanism of the universe — but is the existence of God such as we imagine him proven thereby? Nature occupies itself with moving the stars, with tending our earth physically. But our mind — but our soul? One must admit a God other than the vague idea of a personification of the universal mechanism. One must — why?
At this point I was interrupted and am no longer in the vein.
I went to the post to collect my photographs and a telegram from my father: he telegraphs from Berlin that I am wrong to judge as I do, that he cannot come for good reasons which he will explain to me — but that my arrival would be for him "a true happiness."
Taking Marie with me and Étienne with us, I went to call on Princess Galitzine and Mme Voyeïkoff. Both are in the country.
After dinner we went to the Islands, at whose point one admires the sunset over the Gulf of Finland. The delightful little villas built in the Russian style, in wood, enchanted me — set as they are in gardens and along the numerous arms of the Neva, they resemble toy cottages of the kind sold in whole boxes with little moss trees, wooden horses, and glass ponds. We arrived after sunset and it was cold. I cannot get over this cold in July. Few people — a few cocottes.
As Jesus felt something detach itself from him when the sick woman touched his garment and was healed, so I felt the fluid attaching itself to Yssayevitch as it left me, as he grew more and more enamoured. It is a strange sensation — to feel how little by little one causes oneself to be loved.
Étienne stayed at home and I went to see Marie home, escorted by Paul and the faithful Chocolat on the box, with the intention of bringing Nina back to mine for the night.
Finding Giro in bed I stayed with her for a while; a single word led to talk of Rome, and I told her my adventures in that city, with fire and gestures. I interrupted myself only to laugh, and Giro and Marie were rolling in their beds. An incomparable trio — I laugh like that only with my Graces.
And, by a sudden if not natural reaction, I fell into melancholy on the way home. Nina spoke of love — Yssayevitch needed no encouragement — and I went so far as to say that I had discovered that life was not worth living if one did not love someone above all else, and that, not yet loving, I was in search of an ideal.
"Have you found it?" asked Yssayevitch eagerly.
"No."
All my words are received as oracles. I have put myself in the role of Cassagnac — and besides, I have always done so before without realising it, and shall always do so in the future; only I shall weigh my words, for I often say foolish things and they are taken in deadly earnest.

Notes

The Islands: Krestovsky, Yelagin, and Kamenny islands in the western delta of the Neva, a fashionable summer resort for Petersburg society. ↩
The healing of the woman with the issue of blood: Luke 8:43–48; Mark 5:25–34. Jesus says "I perceive that virtue is gone out of me" — the "virtue" or dunamis (power/fluid) flowing from him to the healed woman. ↩