Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 17 June 1878

I thought for a moment I would never get back to it. Come now — I put in my eight hours and it will get going again.
My aunt and Etienne left for Nice on business. Maman was at the station. Yorke was to dine with us; towards six o'clock I go to collect her with the intention of taking a turn in the Bois. I dressed simply and delightfully — a close-fitting baby bonnet in Italian straw with a batiste bow trimmed with pleated lace — here it is in profile! At the foot of the stairs I encounter Multedo, who has come to pay us a visit.
In the way of agreeable things I always tell him at the foot of the stairs that by not coming, he risks being entirely forgotten. He protests something or other and I reply that it is unkind:
— I am saddened when anyone at all — even the most detestable — forgets me.
He speaks to me of the evening of the ball when I was so pretty. It is true... why was I not... in fact I was very much noticed at that ball...
But it is while awaiting Mme Yorke, in our noble deep-blue huit-ressorts, that I make an impression.
There are days when one feels a certain power over the masses... I attribute little of it to my outfit — one sees now so many extravagant or comical hats that mine is nothing. I wear only my own hair, and my brow is almost bare — there are only a few very modest Empire curls.
There are other days when, in the same clothes and the same carriage, I am in the blackest of moods and no one will look at me.
Yet my coalman — my black pearl — is getting married...
Ah! Well then — Ci rivedrem signore!
It is fate, whatever we do... provided it really is fate... that would amuse me to distraction.
What a devil of a man — the hat, the bearing, the way he walks in the street... there are people who say he looks like a horse-trainer cracking his whip in the middle of the ring, or a carter, or a Bohemian, or an impossible creature — and these good people add that he kindles a passion at every step.
Fortunately he does not look like a distinguished gentleman... yes, fortunately. The type of the distinguished gentleman is not rare in Paris. But this poor wretch has a face like no one else's — poor black pearl, swallowed by an oyster... Maman had composed a bad rhyme; here is a better one:
Poor fat tubby one,
You believe in Mam'zelle Acard
You'll be holding a hen's egg.
That will give you ducks!
Toreador... they say he looks a little like one. In short — all the jealousies of distinguished gentlemen.
That is precisely the amusing part of it. And creole — you know how seductive a creole doubled with a southern Frenchman can be... Go on then, poor creature — I speak as a connoisseur — marry; you will have no more duels and will become like everyone else — those are Mme Gavini's words. Cruel truth.
It happens that a woman gives herself to a man she adores and who does not love her — and she knows it. Is it from a vulgar desire, from depravity? I have thought so, and many others too — we were wrong.
Follow closely what I am about to say — it will be very strong. The woman does not yield to a base feeling, but makes the greatest of sacrifices to obtain those tender words, that indulgent look, that intimacy — and [words blotted: trembling with love at last, in default of the true
she would never have] obtained otherwise. So that... the great act itself is not an end, but only a means of drawing closer to the beloved. Very few men understand this — none of them understand it. They see only a brutal passion, a vulgar feeling, and they will never see the heroic side of it, the... sublime side. Do not laugh — is it not a heroic act to debase oneself, to throw oneself in the mud, to destroy oneself morally for... any great feeling? I speak of women for whom it is moral destruction.

Notes

In Italian in the original: "We shall meet again, sir!" ↩