Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 30 June 1878

I called at the Gavinis', where there was the canoness from the last time.
Afterwards I had my harp lesson and amused myself laughing at the old dear of a professor. Then I had tea and ate raspberries. One cannot eat anything else in this heat.
Multedo was to have accompanied us to the concert at the Orangerie where the Moscow Gypsy singers perform, but it is raining and we stay at home. I deploy all my charms — I hum with the guitar, I sigh old tenderness with the harp, I pose, I chat, I mock, I say touching things... At last the young man, the superb Multedo, this Rose — for Multedo is a Rose; Maman does not believe it, but I assure you he is — the Rose departs somewhat reassured.
[Crossed out: We passed judgment on the Deceased. The Rose said some fairly accurate things about the Deceased, of whom we talked. It is true that the late Cassagnac is one of the most remarkable polemicists and pamphleteers. An already distinguished orator but above all powerful for his interruptions, which make him the most — [rest missing]]
Naturally we talked of the Deceased, and the Rose said that Madame Gavini had thought I was taken with him... but that he had quickly reassured her.
— And why not, Monsieur — why should I not be mad for Paul de Cassagnac?
— Because you can only love yourself.
— Poor reason. Cassagnac is not just anyone — he is a famous man...
— I beg your pardon — he is well known, but he is not famous... Monsieur Thiers was a famous man.
— I beg your pardon — he was a great man.
— What did he produce, to be a great man? With all your intelligence you could not tell me. Monsieur Haussmann is a great man, Monsieur Rouher — they produced something!...
— By that reckoning, the gentlemen architects of the Trocadéro would be great men as well.
Thereupon Multedo gives his assessment of the late Cassagnac. As a journalist he is one of the most remarkable polemicists and pamphleteers. As a man of the world... he is not a man of the world...
— Why? I find him very well bred, perfectly cultivated; one of the rarest minds; perfectly tactful. As for certain liberties, certain things peculiar to him... good God, it seems to me that he is quite entitled to them...
— But look at him... besides...
— Oh! Monsieur, please do not stop. One may say everything about him without being accused of slander — he belongs to the public. You were saying?
— That he is not distinguished... look at his bearing, his neck, his face...
— Ah! Really — but how fortunate that he does not resemble the distinguished gentlemen. But this is foolishness. [Crossed out: what do you say of him as an orator?]
— Well then — tell me, hand on your conscience: would you have married that man?
— Why, yes.
— Oh! This time, forgive me, but that is not the truth.
— I assure you it is.
— And I swear you would not — and I swear that you... are lying!
Men never believe one when one tells them the truth.
— But tell me, Monsieur — as an orator, what does your party say of him? Who is your champion, who speaks for you, who defends you?
— As a Bonapartist, no doubt one cannot deny him... as an orator he has great worth... only, he is not what many people imagine. Cassagnac is not the reckless hothead people take him for. That man has never been carried away in his life. Everything is calculation. It is a role he has set himself and which he plays in a truly superior manner. What he possesses to the highest degree, and what one must admire, is an admirable coolness that has never failed him. As for courage...
— Yes — as for courage...
— Well — one cannot deny it entirely. He has had seventeen duels and has on occasion found himself dealing with men who shot better than he. Yet he is as skilful as he is brave — skilful and profoundly southern. He managed, for instance, to extricate himself quite marvellously from affairs with Clémenceau and another. To fight them would have been to march to certain death, and were he the Reckless One of legend he would not think twice — but he told himself: I am a well-known figure, I have a fine road before me, women... favour me... And faith, he did not fight, and what is marvellous is that everyone declared him in the right! But I blame him in this, because behind an insult one must always be able to find a chest to receive it.
He insulted and would not fight — but I repeat, he managed things so as to be approved by almost everyone.
— That proves he is not the reckless hothead people call him — but does he count for less on that account? And would it not be frankly... stupid of him not to think twice before allowing himself to be dispatched by some imbecile who would thereby render his enemies a signal service? He is not mad, no — but you yourself, who are at best barely just to him, have admitted that he is brave.
— That, yes.
Well! Is he a political man? That depends on one's perspective. But I believe that serious or buffoonish, good or bad, he is. Is he a statesman? Not yet — but he has everything needed to become one. And he will become one. A man of that intelligence can do nothing else. At this moment he has entered upon his second manner. The first opened a superb road for him, but had he continued in it much longer he would have been nothing but a noisemaker. Whereas by entering serious life from now on he will bring to it the amusement of the other, and will thus give it a particular stamp. What matters Mademoiselle Acard's appearance? Her dowry ensures him the repose necessary to establish himself well and to work.
— And I believe he will work a great deal, and will learn everything he does not know, and will become a true statesman.
— I have no doubt of it; which gives his enemies acute anxiety.
[Crossed out: The duc de Padoue and Monsieur Rouher found me] charming.
He could have married some rich coal-merchant's wife, but that would have looked too much like selling himself. This marriage is of extraordinary cleverness, if it is not the result of vulgar considerations; the Acards are not well known but are respectable enough. When all is said, it is almost a disinterested union, so commonplace is it — common-place.
Little Paul knew of my triumph with Rouher, and was on the point of returning to our circle — his and Gavini's — when he learned of it, and that is what made him disappear, on account of Madame de la Valette. The marriage was already decided.
Multedo says that my character is that of little Paul, and that is why I admire him.
We go for a walk to see the preparations for this evening. It will be something splendid. The Republic throws dust in people's eyes — nothing like it has ever been seen. My aunt says that everyone in Nice (where she is returning from this evening with Étienne) is saying that Madame Acard is a former mistress of Antonelli, who gave her a million francs when he sent her back to France with a little girl. That the lady found a Baron Acard and the child was legitimised (??). My aunt is appalled, and so am I, for that matter. It has been talked of so much that at first I did not feel it... but it returns by degrees... above all that look of my aunt's, as if to say that all is lost, all is finished, there is nothing left in the whole world. Indeed there is nothing left... there may be something, perhaps, but for now it is a heartbreaking ruin, a desolating desert — ice, snow, cold, indifference to everything. And yet I am in very good spirits. I reproach myself for having treated the thing too lightly — but how was I to know?!
It was my monk's costume that brought me bad luck. The evening I wore it for the Deceased, I hesitated a great deal and then forced myself to put it on. If I allow myself all these superstitions, I told myself, there will be no end of it. I put it on — and Cassagnac was lost.
The celebration is superb — the illuminations such that even the most fanatical Bonapartists say they have never seen anything like it.

Notes

In English in the original. ↩