Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 11 June 1877

Between eight and five o'clock there is no time to do anything worthwhile, the heat makes everything so sluggish and mealtimes swallow up so much of the day. Yesterday evening while everyone was playing cards I made a sort of sketch by the light of two candles that the wind kept flickering far too much. And this morning I roughed out on canvas our card players — Walitsky, la Daniloff, Bihovetz and Anitchkoff. My head is on fire with the idea of painting four seated figures, working out the poses of hands, arms, expressions. I have never done anything but separate heads, large and small, content to scatter them like flowers across the canvas.
I have also prepared in charcoal a tableau conceived as follows: a desolate beach with a tall palm tree in the foreground; beneath this palm I stand with arms outstretched toward the horizon and head thrown back in distress; in the clouds one can make out the cupola of St. Peter's, the dome of Florence, Vesuvius, etc. Dina kneels at my side in deep dejection. Pincio stands before me and, insofar as a dog can, imitates my strained attitude of yearning toward the Mirage. To the right on a bench sit my aunt, Mme Kondareff, and Maman, all three very sorrowful; at Maman's feet, Prater grave and mournful as always; above the ladies' heads are little arrows directed skyward into which one can make out a roulette wheel. Walitsky with a similar arrow stands wringing his hands before an empty purse. Prater is flanked by Victor and Bagatelle, who watch them, accustomed as they are to seeing him set them after rats — they understand nothing and are uneasy. Lise stands there doing nothing; and finally Grand-papa in his dressing gown turns his back on everyone and extends his hand to Renard. Quite a crowd, and they are only ten centimetres tall.
[In the margin: The idea for this picture belongs to Dina.]
I don't really know how to draw, and so it is only a joke of a thing, but I shall finish it as best I can because I want to, and things come to me under the brush that astonish me, given how little I have studied. You know yourself how little — setting aside Bensa's horrors and a few botched attempts that only did harm — I had thirty-two lessons in Rome, and that is the whole of it.
Grand-papa offers thirty francs to have Renard painted, on the grounds that M. Wabel used to do dog portraits at Baden for that price. Very well, but I do not waste my time on such nonsense for thirty francs!!! Thirty francs is quite sufficient for what I would produce — even for what Wabel produced — but it is not worth the trouble. My poor little hands suffer from all these pigments and I am so hot, I am stifling.
I adore myself so much, I make myself so happy, that I was quite wild at dinner, saying the most fanciful, extravagant things... only Marie Leontievna, Dina and Lise were there. Papa walks in the garden, alone just as he was ten years ago. I showed him the portraits of Alexandre and Melissano and he summed each up in a word.
— The one on the right (Melissano), he said, is a profoundly sensual creature; his nose contains every passion. The other is very much worn out, though still young.
A thought strikes me: how did I make such an outcry about humiliation with poor Audiffret, about love and humiliation with Antonelli, while comparatively passing over Alexandre in silence??
Because, I repeat, you stubborn beast, having braced myself to turn Emile into a Merjeewsky, I was astonished and vexed like a child, and furious at writing it I exaggerated my outrage the better to convey how unworthy I found it and how unaccustomed to it I was. Then Audiffret fell into the category of the Howards, the Pattons, and so forth. Antonelli... Oh! he was a punishment from God. God had made me stupid enough to endure the insult, to forgive it, to say absurdities, to conduct myself like a madwoman, a brute, without love, without self-interest! I knew he was not the husband I desired — no money, no honours. Niece of a pope... a fatal notion!.. Well, let us throw earth on this grave of a year of my life, dead after such a wretched illness! No! I shall not forget that sordid adventure unless I can somehow be reborn, shed my skin, change entirely.
But Alexandre... everything that can wound me is my own fault, and in that whole episode I find nothing to reproach myself for. I loved him and he did not love me; in the end I courted him without any success. He courted me too, but only before he actually knew me... I complain of nothing, I no longer love him and that is a pity. Alexandre told me on the road to Massa that Antonelli had boasted of being loved by me and of having brought me back to Rome a second time. And Alexandre pressed more than once on the quite particular courtship the Roman had lavished on me. No doubt I deserved that base act. Where do all these thoughts come from when what is at hand is a torchlight procession to the medlar tree beneath which a recently strangled rat awaits — which rat we shall place in Walitsky's bed so that his feet encounter it immediately, and at that same moment the fortunate mortal will also crush eggs beneath his sheets.
Then we shall put plates of water in Dina's bed, and I am writing to my aunt a letter informing her that tomorrow she will be summoned before the court for the sum of eight hundred and fifty francs owed for carriage services to one Posati, Charles — that being the name of Alexandre's coachman. Tomorrow there will be quite an uproar; poor aunt, she will be ready to climb the walls at this demand for money.
Finally, after thirty trips up and down, and after breaking a key turning it to get at the jam, I retreated to my domain — but Mme Kondareff came and we talked and laughed until twelve [o'clock].
Because, you see, there are two things I must do — although Alexandre used to say one only ever does one of the two things in this world... First, I must go... you will know if I go, and second, I must have sent from Geneva — where Mme Kondareff has an apartment, a husband, and her luggage — a box containing a dozen live mice for my dear friend Marcuard, and another box with a pair of rats equally alive, and so that all these animals are in good health we shall have air-holes in the wood and food for two days.
Can you picture this colony in the Swiss customs, and those rats in Larderei's room — I am sure he has a horror of rats, he looks like someone who would.
As for poor ex-Audiffret, all that is far too good for him, and since he has no château he will have to be content with an envelope full of fleas — live ones, if you please.