Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 26 February 1878

No one can imagine anything approaching the horrors of yesterday.
The doctor and Blanc said such persuasive things that they were harsh for it. As for me — after weeping, imploring,
screaming, after suffering two nervous attacks — I went to the police commissioner, bringing with me the poor madwoman that is my mother. It mattered nothing to them that I go to the police, so long as nothing was done against Georges!!! That blindness, that madness, that misery!!
So long as the father lives, the law can do nothing against the son, short of committing him to an asylum.
Madame de Mouzay, whom I had also brought along, was dumbfounded, and could make nothing of this woman who sacrificed her fortune, her honor, her peace of mind — the honor, the future, and the very lives of her children — to a brother who is mad, drunk, criminal!
From ten to twelve I lay as though senseless on a sofa, and then went to bed half out of my mind.
On waking I find that I have scratched my neck, and that two fingers of my right hand are blue and swollen — I must have twisted them clumsily yesterday.
But I am in a charming mood. I dreamed of Alexandre — as though I were very much in love with him.
Etienne and his wife arrived this morning — I learned of it when I woke at eleven. I could not go to the atelier at eight; I was shattered.
We are going to separate. Poor grandfather will be left as prey to his son, and his daughter who will no doubt visit him twenty times a day — who will endure the blows, the infamies, the scandals, the creditors.
What one pays out on his account could pay one's own debts — and that would be far more honorable.
I have long endured these infamies, but now it is finished. I can count on no one, now that I see my mothers are mad — genuinely mad. They would rather I soil myself at the police commissioner's than act against this man.
Ah! My God.