Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 21 January 1878

His manservant dressed as a police commissioner will make his entrance, long hindered by the maid — Cassagnac will turn pale, the ladies will take fright. In short, a little scene very well staged — which would produce a great effect on me if I were not forewarned.
Now there are people who say he is making sport of us. I do not believe it.
Mme de Fayet arrives, and MM. de Beaurepaire and d'Alt. I am quite annoyed — yet I am civil, and lead the Prince into my little drawing room, from which one can see everything in the large one through an untinted mirror, to show him a drawing, some albums, and to talk about art.
I could see Cassagnac talking with Dina and Berthe and glancing my way — as I learned afterwards, he was speaking of my beauty as that of a statue, and telling Dina to produce, if she could, a back the equal of mine. She replied that she absolutely refused. I am, I believe, different in reality from what I am in this journal; in the journal it is approximately my natural self, with the slight difference of any reproduction — whereas with Cassagnac I am quite mad; I let myself go, because I know he has wit, and that while saying nothing I do would surprise him, he understands that... I am joking.
La Fayet and the gentlemen melt before him to such a degree that I find it quite funny — I who treat him with laughter. The little Prince admires him completely. M. de Beaurepaire pays him court — M. de Beaurepaire goes everywhere, so I put up with him.
Naturally our marivaudages — I believe that is what they are called — are interrupted by all these intruders. Cassagnac talks for some time with La Fayet — I believe on account of her bodice, which is prodigious... in its openings.
At tea we talk politics — Cassagnac has a migraine; I take his keys [Three lines cancelled: hide them in my bodice and return them only after we have] made an imprint of them with face powder; I slip them between my skin and my chemise and return them to him only at the moment of departure (at midnight) — all warm — with a certain malice but pretending to take them from my pocket.
— That is clever, he says — and leaves, kissing my hand and saying to me: good night, Maman.
It is midnight; I began writing at seven in the evening.
As for yesterday — after recounting a charitable matter for which "we were soliciting Monsieur de Cassagnac" — I went to bed and fell asleep immediately with the greatest pleasure.
On the subject of charity, M. de Beaurepaire, who took it seriously, delivered us a whole speech and cited a thousand examples.
Today — visits from the Mouzays and from Zurlo.
At five o'clock the Boyds arrive — they have been to the Madeleine post office and found no letter. Berthe writes one to him worded as follows:
— "Our husbands suspect the Madeleine post office — it is impossible to collect your reply there. Write to poste Luxembourg 1,2,3,4,5 — make haste, young Bonapartist, for we leave for Nice on Thursday. Wednesday at nine in the evening we shall be at your home, unless you send a letter to the contrary."
He will recognise an English handwriting — and if he has suspected that the other letters came from us, this one will make him change his mind.
I believe all the same that this wretch has disturbed me — and I am so sincere that I return on purpose from my room to write that this friendship could make me neglect... my art, if I were not determined to become strong enough to paint his portrait.
Honni soit qui mal y pense.
Here is Cassagnac's reply, in which he deploys his eloquence to charm unknown women.
Thursday [17 January 1878]
Your idea is amusing — but you were right to suppose that it would be difficult for me to reply under the conditions you prescribed. I am not the enemy of original things — indeed they are the only true things in our ordinarily banal world. Yet you must admit that the signature you indicated verged a little on the music-hall. Why not sign "Canada" since we were already in that latitude?
You wish to come — five of you?
I accept.
Tea will await you — but you will make it yourselves? As a southerner, I know nothing about it.
You ask for my word as a gentleman that you will be perfectly at ease in my home, from every point of view and in every respect?
You have it — and in my life I have never broken an engagement of this kind.
Choose the day and the hour — but allow me, should some serious event require it, to change the appointment.
In these times, one never knows what may happen.
Ibid. p. 140-141
Formerly, when I was not past my prime but heading toward it, your number would not have troubled me.
Today I am more modest.
But take care — you are masked, which proves, until the contrary is demonstrated, that you are all plain. The gap must therefore be filled by wit.
That is your affair. I, being at home, shall have the right to be stupid.
Need I tell you that I know my Parisian world thoroughly and that I know you to be ladies of quality?
Unnecessary, is it not? Without that, I should not reply — having learned through long experience that the woman one does not respect is tedious and not worth the trouble of bestirring oneself.
I would go so far as to suppose that I know one of the five — and that she is perhaps the one who conceived the idea.
But despite and because of my bad reputation, I am a well-bred man — and should I recognise you, you will never know it.
You require absolute obedience from me. I have promised it — without reservation.
For my part, I require one thing — which ought to be within your means — that you be well shod.
Since it is understood that you are obliged to conceal your faces, offer me pretty feet — which very often, in my life, have consoled me for the imperfections that the velvet mask wisely conceals.
Is that understood?
On that note, I await you, and place myself at your ten feet and kiss your ten hands — unless one of you is not complete.
P.
I am delighted. Berthe and I do nothing but devise nonsense at the atelier during the rest breaks. Berthe tells me that the arm she had counted on refuses to hear of anything once another man is involved in the affair. Whereupon with a very naive air I tell her it is a matter of indifference whether we go to the ball together or not, provided we find each other in the box.
— I had not even thought of that! cries the young lady with an inflection that tells me exactly what she is thinking.
But it is all the same to me — every man for himself, let us all lie, and be content.
Blanc stayed until one o'clock. It is absurd.
This morning we began the competition. A sort of prophetess with grizzled hair — very interesting.

Notes

In Anglo-Norman French in the original — the motto of the Order of the Garter: "Shame on him who thinks evil of it." ↩