Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 25 August 1877

Berthe writes to me. Her sister, Lady Paget, is dead. In the same house as ourselves lives the Vicomte de Gontaut-Biron, French ambassador to Berlin. He is a widower and has just married off his two daughters.
Rosalie, who knows his manservant, told me that M. de Gontaut-Biron is to be ambassador to Rome. There is a man I should marry with pleasure. Leaving Schlangenbad at half past four, we are in Wiesbaden by six. There is a ball this evening and Uncle Lautrec (you will remember the Comte de Toulouse-Lautrec) puts all his pride into showing us off. Maman and Dina take seriously the pleasure of triumphing. I do not share the general enthusiasm, because here as elsewhere there is a small, very select Russian society to which we do not belong, having no kinship or friendship in high society. You know that Prince Nicolas of Nassau is married to Mme Doubelt, divorced, born Pushkin — the very daughter of our great Pushkin. She bears the title of Countess of Merenberg and is not well received at the reigning Duke of Nassau's court, but it is around her that everything best at Wiesbaden gathers.
I dressed and coiffed myself well; I was perhaps even pretty, but I was not myself. Myself is dead or asleep; as for my costumed body, it allowed itself to be presented to many officers whose names it cannot recall, and several civilians, among them M. de Bulow, who is "the jackpot" here, as Lautrec says. My body was exhausted from speaking to people who understand French but very little, and my body speaks German very little either. M. de Bulow danced a française with Dina; for the rest he danced with the ladies surrounding the Countess of Merenberg, in black, and the Prince her husband, in grey trousers and a black coat. Well! But he came several times to present me with people who made me dance in a quadrille and a lancers — "of the court," as they say here — because Mlle Doubelt, the quasi-princess's daughter, was dancing opposite me, and we were standing before the Countess and the Prince. It was certainly very good, and I suspect Mme de Merenberg had arranged it so in order to examine my gown; she is very eager for our novelties, and her dressmaker has several times borrowed gowns from Maman and Dina. Speaking of that unfortunate woman — she was wearing an enormous white satin train and all her diamonds! All this with the intention of dazzling, as if one were truly savages. That may pass with the Germans, who are good and simple, but our Russians and the court "know" everything there is to know.
At supper we were introduced to still more gentlemen. Lautrec introduces us to Mme Lieman and her daughters, who are somewhere between the bourgeoisie and the great. The younger one is noted because her portrait having caught the Emperor's eye, he said a few kind words to her at the Exposition itself.
Lautrec is pleased with the effect. I am indifferent, since I am asleep, and my costumed body is stupid as can be.