Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 2 October 1876 (20 September) — Rainy Day and Political Thoughts

Nothing to record except a walk with Papa in heavy rain. A day alone with my father — the aunts were in Poltava — and in the evening great excitement on the subject of Gambetta... I promise to assassinate him... and in the meantime I decide to [blacked out: write to him; inspiration does not come, I shall repeat myself and the monks of Audiffret will serve me with some modifications.
Every day I go to bed with my head full of Cassagnac, and sometimes I think of him during the day as well... O idleness, O countryside!
O rus. (Horace)
Mme Tutcheff avoids me and they say she fears for her lover... the fool. In any case I had the pleasure of seeing this despatch written by my father:
— My [blacked out: brotherly] counsel is that you must come to Gavronzi. Telegraph when?
Prince Kotchoubey has said that if he did not come today, it is because he will have gone to take his two sons to Odessa.
To see him one must wait for his return then. I am eager to efface the stupid impression of yesterday.

Notes

Léon Gambetta (1838–1882), French republican statesman and orator, founder of the Third Republic and a leading figure of the anti-clerical left. Marie's animosity toward him is political: she was an ardent Bonapartist. ↩
O rus! — "O countryside!" Horace, Satires II.6. The celebrated exclamation of longing for rural retirement; Marie uses it ironically to express her boredom with actual rural life. ↩