Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 20 January 1878

Here is his reply.
[Saturday, 19 January 1878]
I accept your invitation with the greatest pleasure, my dear little friend — but how do you expect me to have returned from Versailles and dressed in time for half past six?
If you do not grant me until seven o'clock, it is impossible for me to come.
All my sentiments of respectful affection,
Paul de Cassagnac
To which I reply by telegram from Laferrière's, where I was trying on dresses.
Journal — Edition intégrale 26 septembre 1877 — 21 décembre 1879, ed. L. Le Roy (L'Age d'Homme), p. 137
I grant you until half past seven, enormous friend.
La vierge au cacao.
You will never imagine how lazy I am about writing up these accounts.
At seven o'clock Popaul arrived with his customary nonchalance, and a few moments later Berthe and her sister. Except for Maman and my aunt, we are all in white. You can well picture the dinner with six women and a single man — Popaul. I am pretty and dressed in a manner to leave none of my physical advantages in the shade.
It is incredible — I cannot put two words together; the notebook has been open for more than three hours, but I keep evading it, now by reading, now by playing my various instruments.
Cassagnac opened the white box, and I had to fight a battle to prevent him reading me — wrists crumpled, hands kissed. That very thing is what prevents me from writing: if I do not take a little care over my memoirs, it will be impossible to show them to anyone. I am full of boastful, disagreeable, and false expressions.
He was insisting on it, or pretending to, so I put my keys in his pocket — which he found very clever, since his honour, etc. etc. etc. His hobby-horse in the end, which I take to be an affectation, since his likes are only to be found in Alexandre Dumas.
For me, Cassagnac is a woman — you understand what I mean — and then his respectfulness, and all manner of things. We exchange impertinences and kindnesses; I enjoy myself, and I dread the hour that moves too quickly.
The Boyds pretend to be going to the Bal de l'Opéra in secret from Maman; Dina and I play the same comedy — we invite Cassagnac to guide us. This conspiracy is interrupted by the arrival of the little Prince, to whom we pay no attention at all and continue talking among ourselves — the four women and the one man.
I do not know how the subject of the five ladies of society came up again during dinner — Popaul recounted the correspondence, adding that he had replied.
We implore him to let us attend the tea, and he replies that he has given his word of honour to the five unknown ladies not to betray them.
— But you told me you had not replied.
— But someone wrote to me again since then — you did not know that.
— Really!
And then a thousand ruses to prevent him from suspecting. Berthe and Yorke play their parts well — and Popaul, having taken my solemn word that I had nothing to do with it, tells us how he intends to make the five ladies unmask themselves of their own accord.