Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 12 June 1878

Mme Gavini paid a call on Maman; I had gone out to my dressmakers with my aunt and Dina and Marie.
What a damp squib yesterday!! Let us think no more of it, for God's sake!
Now at home they believe I am the leader of the Bonapartist party and that Cassagnac is going to propose to me.
Tomorrow I resume my work, so neglected since Saturday; I have remorse, and tomorrow everything will return to its accustomed order. I shall have enough of the evening for my affairs.
M. Rouher astonished me in several respects. First by his vigour: he whom I had imagined grave, slow, decrepit — he was leaping
from the carriage, offering his arm, paying the cab, running up the steps. And then by his ideas. Half-education, he says, produces a sense of one's rights and the absolute negation of all authority; it is impossible for everyone to be fully educated unless they come into the world so, which no one has yet invented. He thus proclaims the benefits of ignorance (while saying it is very difficult to decide) and declares that newspapers are poison on the public way.
You may imagine how I examined and listened to him with curiosity — the Vice-Emperor. But I need not give you my assessment here: first because I did not see enough of him, and secondly because I am not disposed to this evening. He told us several curious things that he is perfectly placed to know — about the attempt of '67 against our Emperor, and then things about his imperial family — and asked if we knew the Prince Imperial. No, of course not, but... today itself. How foolish to tell everything in advance — and besides, it is not the little Badinguet who is at issue. You may well imagine I was orthodox with the master of the Bonapartists; I am even astonished at my delicate flatteries and my tact. Gavini and the Baron Larrey seemed to approve of me entirely, and M. Rouher himself was pleased — had he not been, he would have left us to our own devices. But — what a damp squib!!!
They spoke of votes, laws, pamphlets, loyalists, traitors — before me; I was listening — oh! I should think so. It was like a door opened onto paradise.
I said nonetheless that women ought to meddle in nothing, being capable only of doing harm and not being serious enough to avoid going to extremes (?)
I regret being a woman, and M. Rouher regrets being a man — women, he says, do not have the troubles and vexations that we have.
— Will you permit me to say, Monsieur, that both have them equally. Only the troubles of men bring them honours, wisdom, popularity — whereas those of women bring them nothing.
— You think then, Mademoiselle, that it always brings all those things?
— I believe, Monsieur, that it depends on the men.
You must not think I approached him like that all at once. I remained for at least ten minutes rather perplexed, for the old fox did not seem delighted by the introduction. Do you want to know one thing? I am delighted.
Now I want to tell you all the charming
things I said... I must not; I shall just tell you that I made every effort not to say banal things and to appear full of good sense. That way you will imagine it was even better than it was...
Gavini was saying that the Bonapartists were fortunate to have the sympathies of pretty women — bowing before me as he spoke.
— Monsieur, I replied, addressing M. Rouher, I do not give my sympathies to your party as a woman; I give them to you as an honest man.