Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 27 December 1877

Walitsky is very ill; he has always suffered from a heart complaint, and now it has reached a very dangerous point combined with some other disease of the respiratory organs, I do not know what exactly.
Poor wretch, poor man. It would be a terrible loss. He is suffocating — I could not stay five minutes in his room, it is so dreadful to watch him gasping for air and suffering agonies with every breath.
Well — what can one do about it.
The Swiss girls took the anatomy lesson with me — they are my Sapogenikoffs; only the Sapogenikoffs were for useless amusements, whereas these are for useful and charming and elevated ones, and so on.
Apropos of the Sapogenikoffs, Olga is marrying one of the Meissners — the brother of the one I knew in Nice. An imbecile, more or less, and utterly unattractive.
We all had the same idea on hearing of this marriage. And you have it too before I say it. One only need recall our conversations, the bonnets and the... all sorts of things. If it came to pass, it would be one of life's dreams fulfilled. If only mine could be too...
Dear little Olga, and good Emile, excellent Girofla.
The wedding will take place in January, so the couple will soon be in Nice. Would you believe it — I am glad for Olga's sake; this long-desired dramatic turn, desired for two years now, is at last to come about. It is as if one of my own fantasies were about to be realized. I regret not being able to be in Nice — I should conduct the whole affair... they would manage perfectly well without me, I suppose. Oh, it would be so amusing, so comical, and not too immoral; this Meissner deserves nothing better and would be capable of knowing it and saying nothing. Do you know, it is rare enough for a dream like that to come true point by point?!
She has never had but one true love; the other foolishnesses have passed and she is steadfast. She is very fortunate to have found her ideal. I too await my triumph — but alas, not before him, before them, before them, men and women alike. This Meissner will easily become Baron de Meissner in Nice, and I believe he has some fifty thousand francs a year.