Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 10 June 1877

Alexandre is done! Which makes me want to make one for myself — but let me describe the painting first. It is an oblong where on an absolutely black ground one sees two heads looking at each other, bound together by a cord issuing from their respective cravats. At the centre of the cord hangs a heart with the word buono on it — which makes it plain as day: Buonocore, their usurer. And at the bottom one reads this stanza from Dante, Canto V of the Inferno:

"... Maestro chi son quelle Genti, che l'aer nero si castiga?"
After a long and pleasant sea-bath we all dined together — Bihovetz and the Anitchkoffs. After that there was card-playing; as it bored me, I sketched them all and tomorrow I shall put them on canvas. It is only just — these household monsters must be immortalised.
I have a crowd of things to paint, and this, combined with my imminent departure, makes me quite anxious.
Grand-maman's portrait is finished — it took six days, since Alexandre took four of the ten. I fully expect to be given something for it; Grand-papa will give, for I assure you any shop would pay a hundred francs for it — anywhere at all.
The house is full of children — the Anitchkoff children irritate me considerably: dirty, tedious, ill-bred!
How short life is — one has time to do nothing.
Nasimoff writes that San Cesario has killed himself in consequence of forged papers of which he is the author. Brrr...

Notes

Buono (Italian: good) is Marie's pun on Buonocore, the moneylender to whom both Alexandre and Melissano are indebted. ↩
Dante, Inferno, Canto V, ll. 35–36: "Master, who are those people whom the dark air so punishes?" — spoken by Dante to Virgil in the circle of the lustful. Marie applies it with ironic wit to two young men bound by debt to their creditor. ↩