Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 22 April 1877

This is a sonnet by Dante that Santasiglia copied out for me this evening. [Editorial note: This sonnet is not by Dante, but by Petrarch]
Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare La donna mia, quando ella altrui saluta, Che ogni lingua divien tremendo muta E gli occhi non ardiscono guardare Quand'ella sen va, sentendes laudare Beniguemente d'umiltà venuta E par che sia cosa vestuta Da Cielo in Terra a miraeoi mostare, Monstrasi si piacente a chi la mira Che dà per gli occhi una dol cezza al cuore Che intender non la può dei non la prova?
But first, some order.
Having learned that the most handsome of all the Larderei was going to leave tomorrow at six in the morning, I resigned myself to writing him these words:
"I assure you that you have nothing to fear in coming to the reading room at around five o'clock — you will not be subjected to a declaration of love, I promise you. Besides, are you incapable of defending yourself? Let your timidity be reassured and not prevent you from being polite."
I went myself to leave this letter downstairs, and in order to find out whether it had been delivered, I had to pretend to Rosalie that the letter might have come from Piccolelis, that I wanted to steal it, to know what was inside, etc., etc.
Maman is so tired that we keep to our rooms, with the consolation of the balcony. Larderei passed several times in a gentleman's carriage — he did not look up at all. He has a singular effect on me, even so.
I waited in vain in the reading room — at every sound my heart beat so violently and I trembled so, that a little more and I would have fainted; I was so afraid that I almost wished he would not come.
More than ever I practise what I call bonne aventure — that is, at every step, at every occasion I say to myself: if such a thing happens thus, then such another thing will follow, etc., etc. — which causes me to commit a multitude of follies.
Good fat Doenhoff came several times, and in the evening there was a gathering of children — Zunica, Santasiglia, Porcinari, and their elder, Caracciolo. They are all very charming. They are enchanted with me, which puts me in spirits. This poor dear Santasiglia has the misfortune of being madly in love with me... in love as one is only at nineteen, in love like Cherubino. It is... strange.
Since there is no way of seeing the most handsome of all the Larderei... that dear boy has been frightened by my mysterious summonings after the rendez-vous so absurd, so clumsy, at the Aquarium.
It was a great folly... but it is done. Let us mitigate. It is Dina who copies out for me the letter you are about to read.
I first wrote what you see attached here with a pin; but I find that one cannot write what one needs to say. As far as possible, I have tried to make this letter look like a friendly conversation, a benevolent explanation — and above all, while addressing the demands of the situation, to give it a second meaning for those to whom the Count might choose to show it. Do I not appear to be refusing? I flatter him the better to persuade him; I pretend to believe in him so that he will be rational enough to understand. In short, I lie with sufficient impudence — which always throws people off and shakes the firmest convictions.
The most serious matter — the morning rendez-vous — is passed over in silence.
"You were wrong to think that one wished to say unpleasant things to you — one simply wanted to reassure you about the unfortunate ideas you have formed, one genuinely does not know why. And the more steps one has taken to obtain an audience, the more necessary it is to explain what one had to say. You dislike equivocal positions? One detests them. Your declaration astonished one so completely that one was able to reply only when you were already gone. For all your intelligence, this idea is not yours — and it is precisely to discover whose it is that one wished to see you.
What concierge, what wine steward, what [words blacked out: coachman] coachman, what valet has suggested to you the idea of making this magnificent declaration?
Among well-born people one knows what one owes one another; the civilities of the well-bred commit one to nothing. One cannot marry everyone. You have not even been sufficiently agreeable for one to have thought... One wished to see you, then, because you harbour illusions that are inconvenient for you and especially for another person. You may have thought that the kindnesses of Madame were signs?... Yes — but signs of the contrary, proving perfectly that one saw you only as one ought to see you. Besides, how could one not be agreeable with you? You are more amusing than many others when you banter. One does not say so in mockery, but quite seriously — given that one banters oneself sometimes, in one's idle moments.
An intelligent man, a man of spirit such as yourself, can assess and judge himself — that is forbidden only to mediocrities. Let us speak frankly, seriously, without mockery, without anger: are you a match one might wish for?
It is not to offend you, or to dupe you like a fool with false naivety — but truly you must understand yourself all the incoherence of your sad suppositions. One does not believe you to be for sale; one is not of those who buy — and one is almost certain you will end honourably, like so many others. But for the present!...
Can an ambitious or interested person content herself with what you are at present?
It is not to denigrate you — and the proof is that one advises you to place your hopes in your future, for you are not bad at bottom.
Now... perhaps you thought one was in love with you? That was not impossible — but if you have taken seriously a carnival joke that extended itself a little beyond its season, one is genuinely most displeased.
Of what were you afraid? You are quite capable of having dreaded... a heap of nonsense, through stubbornly clinging to this wretched idea.
Does one look like an adventuress? Or else — and this is what one would suppose with the greatest repugnance — are you truly afflicted with a disease of the brain?
To maintain you in entirely healthy ideas, one will tell you something one does not generally confess: that one will marry only a great name, a great fortune, a high position, and above all a stable consideration — because one is ambitious and calculating, and because one has the arrogance to believe oneself entitled to all of that, given that the public generally agrees that one is not unpleasant, and that everyone knows one is noble and not too poor.
There! That is what one had to say to you — it is not frightening, but it might have been disagreeable, for one does not like to be disabused of sweet fancies that flatter one's self-love.
The epistolary means is perhaps better after all.
You will take stock of things more clearly.
"Words fly away"... that is no doubt why you have said such foolish things.
One hopes that this will not alter the excellent terms between us — on the contrary. One is sure that you are yourself embarrassed. One swears that one is neither angry, nor offended, nor put out, and one will see you as before — perhaps with more pleasure and freedom than with others. All this is the beginning of a friendship." P.S. (in printed letters):
The charming person serving as copyist does not know you. If the letter reaches you, simply make it known at the hotel — one's correspondence is not opened.
I am truly relieved. Both to ensure the letter is delivered and to see the Count depart, I shall not go to bed at all.
He goes directly to Florence, stays briefly, and then sets off on his northern tour. I shall not see him for a long time, then — perhaps never again.
So — I must watch my first love depart.

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Notes

The bracketed editorial correction in the manuscript is erroneous. The sonnet is indeed Dante's — Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare, from Vita Nuova XXVI, one of his most celebrated sonnets for Beatrice. Santasiglia's tribute to Marie is apt: he casts her as Beatrice. ↩
In Italian in the original. Dante, Vita Nuova XXVI: "So gentle and so honest appears / my lady when she greets others / that every tongue trembles and falls silent / and eyes dare not gaze upon her... / She appears so pleasing to whoever looks upon her / that through the eyes she gives a sweetness to the heart / that none can understand who has not felt it." ↩
Bonne aventure: fortune-telling; but Marie uses the term for her own private superstitious habit of making conditional bargains with fate. ↩
Cherubino: the adolescent page in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro (1786), archetype of undiscriminating youthful infatuation — in love with every woman he meets. ↩
The letter is written throughout in the formal impersonal third person on ("one"), which in French allows intimate matters to be addressed with cool detachment, as if spoken by no one in particular. ↩