Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 30 May 1877

This day is marked by two incidents: the first is that I made a copy of Melissano's portrait in one hour and ten minutes, and the second is that I wrote verse to Marcuard without realising it:
Monsieur, in the name of art please send quickly the portrait requested. I wish to finish this painting before our departure — the prince himself has commissioned it from me.
Receive our compliments and the flower herewith imprinted.
Marie Bachkirseff.
N.B. Please do not take this for a feast-day greeting on account of the flower.
We laughed like madwomen, discussing with Dina whether Marcuard would have enough wit to spot the rhyme. I have begun using my artistic paper for ordinary mortals.
I have just devoured a book that has sickened me of love. A charming princess in love with a painter! Fie! This is not to insult painters or to say something affectedly foolish — but I don't know, it jars; I have always had aristocratic ideas, and I believe in the races of men as in the races of animals.
Often — that is to say, always at the beginning — noble races become so through moral and physical education, which transmits its effects from father to son. What does the cause matter! It is like Maman who, to excuse Caracciolo's failings, exclaims: Poor man, why mock him — he wasn't properly taught and that is all. Yes, it is exactly like what I said yesterday to Rosalie, who was complaining of the bad weather.
"Bad weather! Oh no — and if it weren't raining you'd see... how fine it would be."
This evening I felt once more something like a shadow of tenderness towards Alexandre.
The rest scarcely changes. Mme Kondareff is still borrowing — today she tried Grand-papa, but the ungrateful old man didn't budge. Lise is immersed in her dog loves; Dina drags herself from bed to armchair; and I no longer even have the distraction of loving the Florentine. I don't know why "the Florentine" strikes me as a sort of contemptuous epithet — like... that... good-for-nothing, that... fop, that... crackpot.
I leafed through the Antonelli period — that is to say the final interview and what followed. It is truly surprising how I reasoned. I am filled with astonishment and admiration at myself. I had forgotten all these reasonings, so just, so true, and I was rather worried that people might believe there had been a love (now past) for the Comte Antonelli. Thank God one cannot believe it — thanks to this dear journal.
No, truly — I did not think I had said so many true things, and above all thought them. That was a year ago, and I genuinely feared I had written nonsense. No, truly, I am pleased. Only I cannot understand how I could have behaved so foolishly and reasoned so well.
I need to repeat to myself that no advice in the world would have prevented me from doing whatever I did, and that I needed the experience. That was the time when I still thought a little as I had in the Duke's time. I could not have imagined all that baseness I now know.
I am unpleasantly struck by how much I know — but it must be so, and when I grow accustomed to it I shall think it perfectly simple; I shall rise again to that ideal purity which is always somewhere at the bottom of the soul, and then things will be even better — I shall be calmer, prouder, happier, because I shall know how to appreciate it. Though at present I am vexed, as if for someone else. The fact is that the woman who writes and the woman whom I describe are two different beings: what do all these tribulations mean to me? I record, I analyse, I copy the daily life of my person — but to me, to my true self, it is all quite indifferent. It is my pride, my self-love, my interest, my skin, my eyes that suffer, weep, rejoice — but I am only there to watch, to write, to narrate and reason coldly upon all these grand miseries, as Gulliver must regard his Lilliputians...
I have much still to say — always to explain myself... but enough.