Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 13 September 1877

We are at Schlangenbad, where Doenhoff, Marcuard, Pietro Antonelli, Campomarino, Paul de Cassagnac and Alexandre are also staying. Alexandre is very thin and looks ill. But I am delighted, because he loves me. I am always with him and everyone seems to find it quite natural. The freedom one enjoys at Schlangenbad allows us often to be alone; he is happy in it, and I regard him as my sick child — my arms were around his neck and he was looking at me with tender, grateful eyes when I was woken by the barbarous musicians who play near the spring!
This dream — one of the longest I have ever had — is certainly the most natural and the most charming, the happiest, the most... everything that is best.
And his mother was there, and everyone, and then a mass of things... And those hideous musicians!
The Liemans came to call on us.
We called on the Lisanders.
And in the evening to the gala at the Skating; I have an extraordinary pair of skates of my own.

In English in the original.
The Gerbels, the Lisanders, the Liemans, and Marx. You remember — that perennial American.
No one amusing, needless to say.
Grandfather has seen old acquaintances from Russia again and is decidedly going to launch himself into society.
From the Skating we go to the promenade where the music is over and only the Merenberg and her circle remain. That is the real place to be...
It is the Lisanders who know her; the Gerbels do not. I believed they did because the Gerbel girls at the last gathering were near her — but it was because they were with Mme de Lucken, née Princess Chabowsky, who is a friend of the Merenberg.
I have had enough. These young ladies have stupefied me. This is not society, and it is deathly tedious. Ah! My poor dream in which I told myself: at last, then, I am going to enjoy myself. Ah! Yes indeed — and the musicians.
When people used to say to me: there is a woman of wit — I wondered what that meant; I could not understand how one could be foolish, just as I cannot understand how one can be wicked. But now... Ah! my Emperor. A stupid woman is even more stupid than a stupid man, I believe.
They have nothing to say, these young ladies! They know nothing, they are foolish — good heavens!
I took Marx for a genius!
These young ladies... we were talking of travel; I said it was a rather melancholy pleasure once curiosity is satisfied, and I quoted the true and charming passage from Mme de Staël on travel. [Three lines crossed out.]
"Oh! I detest travelling," cried the eldest of the Gerbels, "just think of it — when one has twenty trunks to pack!"
Besides everything else, there was boastfulness in this remarkable observation on travel: "Just think of it, Monsieur — we travel with more than twenty trunks!"
I am disgusted with life!
Alexandre has no need to fall in love with me, and Plevna has not yet fallen.