Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 19 September 1876 (7 September) — Reflections on Deception and Family Relations

So then — I have been played for a fool!
It is very offensive, I assure you, to have taken a boy for a man; to have expended all one's wit, one's conversation, one's feeling... upon a callow youth like my brother or like Michel! Ah! Antonelli — it is not love that makes me weep for you. Those kisses, my shame, are the second drop of ink in the glass of water; the Duke of Hamilton was the first.
[Blacked out: I am amazed at myself that an unpleasant memory] torments me so long... indeed it is already four months... I am astonished to catch myself twenty times a day with furrowed brow and chin in hand, brooding on that shameful... journey I made to Rome with my aunt.
[In the margin, crosswise: I am inept.]
I am on edge from constantly hearing wounding insinuations about my family and being unable to take offence — for I provoked them myself — and my father has the art of speaking of them with regret and a touching restraint...
I might well have silenced him, cursed him, driven him from my presence — were it not for that wretched fear of losing my last wretched recourse... He is kind to me — it is kind of me to repeat it — but how could he be otherwise towards a girl who is witty, educated, pleasant, gentle, and good (for I am all of these here, and he says so himself), who asks nothing of him, who has come simply as a courtesy visit, and who flatters his vanity in every possible way?
In the morning I took a walk with him on foot, and in the evening on horseback.
On returning to my room I wanted to throw myself on the floor and weep; I restrained myself and it passed. This is how I shall always act. One must not grant indifferent people the power to make one suffer. When I suffer I feel humiliated — it revolts me to think that such and such a person was able to offend me.
Well then — despite everything, life is still the best thing in the world.