Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 28 June 1878

Yesterday was celebrated, at the chapel of the Passionist Brothers on the avenue de la Reine-Hortense, the marriage of Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac to Mademoiselle Julia Acard. The witnesses for Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac were Monsieur de Beaupin, former prefect, and Monsieur de Loquessie, deputy for Tarn-et-Garonne. The witnesses for Mademoiselle Acard were Monsieur Couvelet, former officer, and Monsieur Clément Laurier, deputy for the Indre. Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac has not married an Italian, as was incorrectly reported, but a young and charming Alsatian, daughter of the Comte and Comtesse Stéphano Acard, a woman of superior mind, uniting the merit of beauty with the not less estimable merit of fortune. For reasons arising from a recent bereavement, the two families alone were invited, and the marriage took place in the simplest possible manner.
It was Monsieur l'abbé Lamarche, curé of Sainte-Marie des Batignolles, who gave the nuptial blessing to the couple, in the presence of the curé of Saint-Philippe du Roule, in whose parish the bride resided, and who had been most desirous of attending the ceremony, to address to Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac words of elevated and heartfelt congratulation and encouragement. Bonds of military brotherhood united Monsieur l'abbé Lamarche with Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac. Having served the Crimean campaign as military chaplain, the curé of Sainte-Marie des Batignolles was decorated on the battlefield of Gravelotte, where he voluntarily tended the French soldiers. Making himself a prisoner so as not to be separated from them, he accompanied them into the fortresses where they were interned, and by admirable care and inexhaustible devotion he preserved and consoled hundreds of them in the dark and unhealthy casemates of northern Germany. Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac was one of the prisoners whom he rescued from the miseries and moral sufferings of captivity, and the worthy priest was certainly more moved yesterday in blessing his friend's marriage than he had been under the hail of shells in the battles fought about Metz.
Well, there it is! Like the death of poor Walitsky — I shall have difficulty realising the death of poor Cassagnac. First of all, the Acards are not counts but barons. It is done. It is finished. Entirely finished. It all seems utterly mad to me. Poor Cassagnac. And only 400,000 francs as dowry! Doubled after the parents' death. People say it is a great deal. Julian says it is the necessary minimum — security, rest — and that anything beyond it is profit; whereas without those twenty thousand a year one was exposed to every hazard, debts up to the neck. And after all, in a moment of need the most precious furniture sells cheap. Yes — a rosewood guéridon sold as if it were a mahogany bedside table. Say what you will — I believe Cassagnac is worth more than twenty thousand, even forty thousand francs a year.
I am moved by these few words in the Figaro. I have never been touched by such language, such priestly things... and then this ceremony seems to have been so simple, so dignified, so different from the clamorous ovations of Saint-Augustin. It is an act of high policy to have thus separated his two lives. What a good heart Cassagnac has — he must have entered so fully into the sanctity of the ceremony. He will adore his wife, if he did not love his fiancée. After all, it must amuse him to deal with a respectable virgin. All the natural modesty he will find adorable and will tell her: "You are an angel!" — with those intonations of infinite and charming tenderness he possesses so admirably. I am a little jealous. I am also afraid of his successes. Certainly, says Daillens — walking beside that man, one seems to be walking alongside a firework display or Venetian lanterns. What is gripping is that all the women are mad for him. I should dearly like to distribute the following announcement: Charitable souls are informed of the lamentable and unexpected end of Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac, carried off by a malign, dry, and black fever which seized him by the throat, in consequence of which he has fallen into the common pit of the discarded, whence it is impossible to retrieve him; there will therefore be no funeral. Pray for him! He has such need of it. [Crossed out: Here is my nonsense which] I feel inclined to write to him in my own name, naturally — I think it will make a good impression.
God knows what ideas come to one sometimes... Now I wish to make a position for myself in Paris, everywhere — driven by the desire for... I know not quite what, but which concerns Cassagnac. Mouzay and his daughter dine with us and I recount to them that Mademoiselle Acard has indeed become Madame Paul de Cassagnac — but that Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac has become Monsieur Julia Acard, and that after his lying-in he will be very pale and thin and women will adore him more than ever. After all, this marriage... his wife will keep watch — provided the poor man does not die now. I have the intention, and what is worse the conviction, of meeting him again. He must appreciate me, do me justice, know me as I am in the two letters — as I am in reality.
Madame Gavini invites me to the Opéra. Multedo was here yesterday and today — I did not see that beautiful rose in trousers. I think all the good I say of the late Cassagnac, and it seems to me impossible to find another like him, that my sympathies, my tastes, my intelligence are bound to this man. It seems to me that I am attached to him and that it will only grow; I should not wish to say anything — I have so thoroughly dishonoured myself with my past jokes that I fear people will think it yet another piece of amorous foolishness... and I am ashamed to say nothing. I will not affirm anything so as not to have to excuse myself again. We shall see in what follows — but I must say what the case is now. It seems to me that for me there is only he who is capable of understanding me. But he is dead. And at this moment he is no doubt with his wife. Paul de Cassagnac is married. That does not prevent me from concentrating on him all my tender thoughts, [Crossed out: that will follow him through his whole existence, with besides an interest] and from confessing to myself what I dared not confess — out of superstition — while he was alive. That is to say that I have little by little become attached to him despite myself, and that morally I have nestled close to him, and I rest against his broad chest as I did during that last visit in the rue de Boulogne. I regret having written that — I may change my mind, may be mistaken, which would be a profanation. But I repeat: it is not a passing fancy — it is rather an Idea over which many things have passed and may pass still, while it continues to grow. [Written across the page: I have stopped myself a hundred times from telling you this nonsense, and I regret it the moment after writing it. These are, I repeat, fantasies that the pen makes heavy and disfigures.] I am not too angry; I have been expecting it for three months already and have grown accustomed to it. I have not shed a single tear — not even of anger. I regret having related this nonsense; I believe after all that I had need to lay on someone's head the volume of affection that heaven has granted me. The investment is made; I am no longer anxious. What absurdity I talk! No — seriously — you will never know of what adorations I am capable. I should wish to be double so that my second self could prostrate itself before the first, because the first has the honour of being on her knees before him. The ancients were wrong to represent Love as they did — Love is the woman who loves. Vulgar-feeling people. And yet I had forbidden myself to treat the serious things of Love lightly. One ought to write that word only in extreme cases, in definitive circumstances — and here I jest with it again to speak of things that may after all be serious despite whatever strangeness that would imply. I have read novels of Parisian manners where one finds quite extraordinary things, even in Balzac... and then ideas come to one of conducting an intrigue... Good God — pray do not think I am vulgarly in love with the late Cassagnac. You do not think so. That would be stupid and even sordid. I have great affection for him; I fear and hope that it will go on increasing and that one day I shall love him... For, to be frank with you, I should not care to love another — he would not deserve it... who knows... let us look among the celebrated, discover a great man... it will never be that... Here we have the knight, [word blacked out: the braggart,] the Don Juan with a good heart, and the whole of it poeticised, embellished, elevated, magnified by those words: man of politics. And the whole of it has fallen into the trough of marriage — which one would excuse only in one's own favour. But he belongs to another woman... bah! If I come to love him I shall separate him from her; I shall take him for myself. But at present it is a question of something else, especially if I truly wish to arrive at those ends that are mad enough and reprehensible. One must be famous to give him regrets; one must marry, etc., etc. In truth, this changes nothing in my plans — whether I love or love no one, I shall act the same.
Well — this preoccupation no longer exists. He is married; it is finished. His successes will spur me on as Breslau's drawings spur me on. One must affirm nothing; let us recount what takes place. This is not a novel where one emphasises certain things because one knows how it will end. Fie! That fellow ought not to have married. Either he is in love, or he was ensnared, or he is not what I thought. He would be a thousand times more interesting alone.