Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 20 May 1878

Mme Yorke proposed the day before yesterday that I go with her to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ball — which will be the most curious ball of the Exhibition, after the British Embassy one. One had only to request an invitation from our own embassy; it was entirely possible. It was only done yesterday evening.
The ball [words blotted: takes place] this evening.
It is not yet noon; I have already returned, having left the studio saying I had a headache. I could not work because I was weeping with longing to go to this ball.
And if you knew how desperately I want to go, you would take pity on me!
I want, want, want to go. It is foolish not to
resign myself — but I grieve over it as if it were some wholly unprecedented vexation.
From noon to two o'clock I wept more copiously than the great cascade at the Exhibition.
No one gave me credit for my forbearance — if instead of shedding tears I had made a scene, they would have been moved; but since I said nothing, they let me die of grief. Please do not tell me that they adore me and do everything for me. They do absolutely nothing — you must know this better than anyone.
It would be so convenient, so amusing, with Mme Yorke.
And no one, no one, no one to... If that is not pitiable, if it is not wretched, if it is not atrocious!
Weeping because I want to go to a ball! And neither the exemplary mother, nor the tender-hearted aunt, nor the angelic cousin... Oh, the wicked ones, the heartless! It is a quarter past two, and I have not the heart to go to the studio.
No one does anything for me — besides, my eyes are so red, and there are still so many tears left that the studio would be flooded... The wretches — it makes no difference to them, and no one will do anything for me.
How foolish of me... Oh, for once in my life that I actually want to go — at nineteen I am not yet dead — and only this paper knows.
You see, I do not leave because I keep hoping that someone will come to ask why I am weeping; and when I have the audacity to confess that it is because I want to go to this ball, they will do something to make it happen. It is nearly three o'clock — the hour advances still — and I have not even a dress, but there would still be time; until eleven o'clock there are eight hours... But no one to help me, not even anyone to listen.
For once in my life I weep over something befitting my age... I... They are all hiding, on my word of honour, and the aunt who adores me has gone to the Exhibition — what a generous heart! They know very well what I want, but they are lazy and prefer to let it pass, the heartless. They would never give anything to a beggar — never — and yet they are said to be kind!
Berthe, who is married and in London, has received an invitation — and I have not, and she has neither need of it nor desire for it.
It is four o'clock. I tried to think of other things, but it was precisely those other things that brought me back to the ball.
I played Zimmer's waltz more than thirty times in succession, then all the Neapolitan songs.
You know my aunt is strolling about the Exhibition.
When I think that I have the bodice, and all I need is a skirt that Caroline could make in an hour with a piece of tulle illusion!
This is what comes of not making scenes. Oh! The wretches. I shall keep today's pocket handkerchiefs as a memento.
Through this day I have become a child again; all the ugliness is far away — there is only a poor little girl who wants to go to the ball... This longing is complicated by other considerations which it is pointless to state.
[Written across the page: 1880. It was to see Cassagnac — but he was not going.]
Those people, seeing me gloomy at lunch, found nothing better to do than to speak to me of Multedo's lips and teeth; and as my disgust was unambiguous, they turned to Cassagnac's teeth and lips — "Now there's one," they said, "he's the right sort" — all accompanied by questioning glances. If Paul de Cassagnac were a little less what he is, he would have become odious to me, for that alone.
It is the same with Blanc — shall I describe this gentleman to you in a word? He is said by everyone to be still one of the most handsome men in Paris. Well, this gentleman is capable of approaching a woman while offering his services and declaring how much he can endure. What I am telling you is odious — but I would stake my head on it being true. I had imagined it, and yesterday I asked de Daillens [words blotted: that I had heard it] by chance. She replied that it was just like him, and that besides, his success with women was due to.....................she did not
finish.
I cannot forget it, and I keep hoping still to go — it is not yet five o'clock.
I open the box and the notebook for the eleventh time.
Here is what I write to Yorke.
Dear Madame,
It was Fortuné who took the letter requesting the invitation, and it seems he left it where it should not have been — so that I am truly in despair... All the more so as I have a sudden, mad desire to attend this ball. If by some miracle you could rescue me from this situation I should be truly very glad.
Twelfth. Opening of the locked box. I have just broken four chairs. That is not much — it has not calmed me.
Thirteenth. Devil take everyone — I have re-broken the four chairs and added two more and a table.
Others are preparing their gowns; I am breaking the furniture — and I am still being generous in choosing the plainer ones.
Everyone takes the satisfaction they can. One does what one can.
The wretches, the brigands — if it were a matter of their Georges, they would already have done everything, the villains!
Fourteenth time. Each time I think I have said everything.
This Marie lives at Cassagnac's, I have been told. I now understand the little grey-and-blue room next to the red one. The bourgeois bed, the dried flowers, the photographs all around the bed, on the walls.
She is a sort of housekeeper-muse; it seems someone asked where she dressed: "I have Paul's study." She mends his socks. But what strikes me as singular, to say the least, is that this grey room should be so close to the red one... And he is a man capable of submitting to such a passion..... It is so
extraordinary that it is almost not too vile...
But truly, this story is curious. How funny it is, how funny, how funny, very funny.
So there are:
The politician, the knight, and the Scoundrel.
Well, he is triple, like the Hindu deity.
How stupid that it is no longer carnival.
But this evening... the Wretches have returned from the Exhibition.
Berthe writes to me.
I have returned from the ball. Mme Boyd still speaks of nothing but Berthe and her perfidy.
I had a white faille gown by Worth, which I wore like an umbrella — insignificant and commonplace. Add to that a face that had been weeping for hours and a mind completely blocked. M. de Plancy, seeing me bored, came to escort me round the salons, then introduced me to the Comte de Valori — the one from the d'Osmond ball. He was foolish enough to mention it; I played the fool — and "that was the end of it."