Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 9 September 1877

In every book, new or already read, whenever someone describes catching sight of the dome of Saint Peter's, I am moved in an almost unbelievable way — unbelievable because... what is this dome of Saint Peter's to me?
I wept during the day. My ruined life fills me with sorrow... God preserve me from being taken for a misunderstood divinity — but I am unhappy! Many times I have tried to acknowledge myself struck by an "evil fate," and each time I have revolted against that horrible thought...
Nunquam anathemathis vinculis exuenda! There are those for whom everything succeeds, while for others everything turns bad. And against that truth there is nothing to say. And that is precisely the horror of it!

Latin: "Never to be freed from the chains of anathema" — an ecclesiastical curse formula.
I was about to cry out: it is my fault. That would be inaccurate. I did not act knowingly.
For four years I could have worked seriously, but at fourteen I was chasing after the shadow of the Duke of Hamilton — a deplorable thing to admit. I do not blame myself because I did not squander myself knowingly. I regret myself but I do not reproach myself for everything. Circumstances combined with my free will — continually hampered as it was — with my ignorance, my exaltation that mistook itself for the scepticism acquired by forty years of experience, have tossed me about one knows not where and the devil knows how!
Others, in similar circumstances, might have found solid support that would have allowed them to work in Rome or elsewhere, or else a marriage. I — nothing.
I no longer rebel. It is the hand of God.
I did not rebel against... the Naples affairs either.. Could I complain of... And yet I pleased him — I swear to you that I pleased him!
(I gave his illusions a good kick.)
I do not regret having lived as I pleased; it would be strange to regret it, knowing perfectly well that no advice is of any use to me.
I believe only in what I feel. What is a pity is that I was not born into another house... but that.... I do not know how to explain it, but all these forays into the past are... not absurd, but... useless... inexact, misapplied... I do not know how to put it.
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It is raining, it is cold.
I spend all my days with the family, doing nothing — I am amusing... I entertain!!
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We read the war news and my head is filled with nothing but the formulas of dispatches and reports. Walitsky calls Fortuné "Stoïko Pasha" (look it up in the Russian dictionary), commander-in-chief of the cockroach regiments of Mme la baronne de Mertens. Thereupon we compose dispatches about detachments and engagements... You know, that blessed baroness who will never have me again had cockroaches by the score. Fie! How dreadful. I do not know how I endured two months in the place. Everything degenerates at our pension. That filthy boarding house, that vile baroness. What a detestable fortification. If I were to write again to the Surprising One, my letters would reek of bastions and entrenchments a league away — not to mention that the unfortunate fellow would be forced to do penance in Bulgaria or near Shipka. Girofla-Pasha. Galula-Pasha.
How far away it all is!
Why say "how far away!" Absurd creature! Those are the phrases one utters the devil knows why — to speak as one does in books.
Do me the favour of not repeating such stupid banalities on the pretext of charming posterity.