Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

I have carried away from Rome the same pleasant and insipid impression as from Naples, and a sketch of an old woman done tolerably well.

I have carried away from Rome the same pleasant and insipid impression as from Naples, and a sketch of an old woman done tolerably well.
I am in Genoa.
I am calm. People spoke to us of Pietro quite naturally, as though nothing had occurred; no one seemed to concern themselves about him or to believe all manner of things. We travelled with a sort of madman.
I have begun a reverie in eight pictures.
This winter past, and now, I have passed almost every day through the Piazza Barberini, and on the corner of a building I read an inscription in red letters which struck me singularly yesterday: Vogliamo l'accessione al regno costituzionale di Vittorio Emanuele.
This wish expressed in that harmonious, gentle language produces a charming contrast in which I find something of an involuntary coquetry. I am naïvely delighted to see a king demanded.
Behind this sentence, in my imagination, rises the monstrous figure of Victor Emmanuel, stamped with a strange majesty, marching on Rome, having himself proclaimed on the Capitol by a mere 4,000 as Re e liberatore — and thereby accomplishing the union of the most beautiful country in the world.
It sends a shiver of enthusiasm through one's veins, and I assure you that the ugly head of the king is worth many a head from antiquity.
This inscription has still another meaning. It is the wish of Young Italy, which seems to me borne on invisible wings and which moves and softens one — one knows not why.

Wednesday, 3 January 1877

I am back from Rome — see rather the supplement. Today was spent at San Remo; the princess went to Maman's to invite her to luncheon. So we all were together. Maman scolded — that is, reprimanded her husband — otherwise all went well. The young couple are congenial and Hélène is a great philosophical rascal, more good than bad. They were doubtless all at Maman's feet, but I do not know what I am writing — I am tired.
I am back in Nice. Oh, horror!

Thursday, 4 January 1877

The Anitchkoffs — grandfather who is blind, Pelikan who is deaf, Broussais who shouts, everyone shouting! The brown walls, the cuckoo clock, grandfather's disputes — his howling and moaning for nothing...
Oh, that! The gossip — for Mme Tutcheff is telling everyone that we have nothing left, that everything is to be sold, that Binder's carriages were ordered but not delivered for want of payment, that... that...
The old men, the brown walls! Oh nightmare, oh despair, oh madness!

Friday, 5 January 1877

I recall the Duke of Hamilton only to say that I have forgotten him — this reflection arising from what I said about him to Pietro.
I went to Rome and it is as if I had not been there. Yet everyone we met seemed glad to see us again, and I still see Potechine's cordial face — with him we went one evening to the Skating, always with the idea of finding Antonelli there, for it is in the evening that bad company assembles. We were given the royal box, but there was no one... The promenade on the Pincio on New Year's Day, at a walking pace because of the quantity of carriages, between a double hedge of men, is always a pleasure to me. I listen and hear the most flattering remarks. Bog — Count Pominsky in his proper name — shoots his glances more than ever. This impertinent creature is not without charm, but it would be enough for me to know that he had uttered the slightest barely disagreeable word about me to hate him to excess. A remarkable thing: during these eight days in Rome I had my voice back completely; barely arrived in Nice, I again have a frog in my throat.
To shorten the time I slept until one o'clock, and at luncheon I was caught in my dressing-gown by Count Merjeevsky and his mother. They have been in Nice some days and come often.
Leaving Broussais to deliver his most extravagant nonsense, I withdrew after a most stormy dinner. I play the role of a caged monkey at which everyone comes and pokes a cane or umbrella through the bars — and when the monkey has executed its finest leaps, its most elaborate capers, its most furious grimaces, one walks away smiling at the visitor to whom one was determined to show the animal.
There was then compassion expressed for poor Émile, ruined by Saëtone, Cresci etc. While in Rome I wrote an acrostic which I sent to Petersburg.
Émile within days Will mew, for vultures Ignobly selling his tower Will play him a bad turn — Now there's a fiasco?
Well then, after this pun — Whom will he now court?
An immense throng Of ladies who, to Indemnify their love, Set the tower rocking
Wretched scoundrel, they cry — good day!
Give us back our hearts, dreadful Giaour, Then go and stuff yourself in some oven... Oh Troubadour!
And then a song about the return from Serbia — or rather a scene.
Act I
Girofla in a Turkish dressing gown and slippers, walks along skipping and singing. The scene takes place between the Place Masséna and the oriental shop.
I return, O Christian, From those places Gay and radiant — Not knowing geography in the least, I found myself at a point Other than Serbia.
(He stops and, as if seized by a delicious memory, smiles and slaps his knees.)
What fine weather. Ah! Satan — I spent the night at the Sultan's! (reprise)
I spare you the rest.
So this evening there was a grand reception in my room, lit up as it is every evening. I love lights. Among the persons of high distinction present were Mme Anitchkoff and her three daughters, General Bibi, Collignon, Walitsky, Dina, my aunt, and Maman. I sat near the chimney, leaning on a pedestal table, my feet royally disposed — and wearing a Mary Stuart cap, not my feet, myself. The feet are set in red mules made by Rubini in imitation of the Egyptian shoes that struck me in Aida.
You perhaps think me disappointed at not having seen Antonelli. Well, you are wrong. I have nothing to say to him — for the moment — there was nothing in store but reproaches.
— Me, reproaches? Later.
And yet it is dreadful that there should be a man who thinks of me what Antonelli has every right to think — and with full knowledge of the cause.
Oh madness, oh abasement, oh eclipse of intelligence.
Culpa mea.
Dubium, illusio, deceptio, oppressio. There is my life expressed in a distinguished language.
I find a letter from Berthe for the New Year, and a sachet of violets — found only in Nice — sent by Ricardo.
Nice alone is useful to me. I am not dissipated — I spend my life in scientific and historical research, learning so many things I do not know.
And then... comes a wild desire to have a magnificent study full of precious books in which to spend most of my time.
That is why I want to go into society: to find a rich husband and give myself up to study, to frequent learned men, writers, artists. That is why.
And you attribute this to the desire to show off dresses!
I do not disdain them, far from it. Physical luxury is necessary to moral luxury.

Saturday, 6 January 1877

I encountered Princess Souvoroff at the Skating, who... repeated to me about Tutcheff the same thing as the other day at Mortier's. This was apropos of what I said about Nice.
It is a city of gossip and slander — I learned upon returning from Rome.
And I told her all of this.
— Pay no attention to this gossip, she said — and take...

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Notes

Vogliamo l'accessione al regno costituzionale di Vittorio Emanuele. In Italian in the original. "We want accession to the constitutional kingdom of Victor Emmanuel." A Risorgimento slogan inscribed on a building in Rome. ↩
Victor Emmanuel: Victor Emmanuel II (1820–1878), the first King of unified Italy; known for his impressive if ungainly appearance. ↩
Re e liberatore In Italian in the original. "King and Liberator" — Victor Emmanuel's proclamatory title after the unification of Italy. ↩
Young Italy (La Giovine Italia): the Risorgimento movement founded by Mazzini in 1831, calling for Italian unification and republican government. ↩
Sympathique: congenial, appealing — in 1870s French, a stronger and more precise term than merely "nice." ↩
Murs marrons ("brown walls"): for Marie, the epitome of bourgeois provincial drabness. ↩
Pendule à coucou ("cuckoo clock"): a symbol of middle-class taste and provincial time-keeping, deeply alien to Marie's aesthetic sensibility. ↩
The acrostic spells E-M-I-L-E (Audiffret's first name). The French wordplay on "four" (oven/fiasco) and "tour" (tower/turn) does not translate exactly; I have preserved the sense rather than the wordplay. ↩
Giaour: from Turkish, an infidel — a non-Muslim. Used here as a theatrical mock-insult in the operatic burlesque. ↩
Girofla: a character from the operetta Giroflé-Girofla (Lecocq, 1874) — Marie repurposes the name for her fictional Serbian-volunteer character. ↩
Culpa mea In Latin in the original. "My fault" — from the Catholic mea culpa (confession formula). ↩
Dubium, illusio, deceptio, oppressio In Latin in the original. "Doubt, illusion, deception, oppression." ↩
Cabinet d'études: a gentleman's study or private library — traditionally a male domain for serious intellectual work. ↩