Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 3 July 1878

The stories Doctor Michel tells! And they are, alas, true!
Monsieur and Madame Acard, a notary of Blois, have a son who goes to Rome for some purpose or other; there Antonelli's beauty is proposed to him, and he marries her all the more willingly since he is in love with her. They never lived together, but Madame had great success, which earned her a great deal of money though little honour. The ill-bred say she was quite simply a kept woman.
Monsieur Acard passed away two years ago and his charming widow — still beautiful, moreover — remarried eight days before her daughter; it was Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac who served as witness to his future mother-in-law. The honourable Monsieur Paul de Cassagnac is said to have taken a great deal of money, but only thirty thousand livres of annual income are admitted to.
God, how fine that is!
Multedo came to say his farewells, and as it is raining he proposes to accompany us to the Exposition.
Accepted — but before that, finding ourselves alone, he implores me to be less hard on him, etc., etc., etc.
— You know that I love you madly, that I am suffering... if you knew how terrible it is to see nothing but mocking smiles, to hear nothing but mockery, when one is truly in love.
— You are working yourself up.
— Oh! No, I swear it. I am prepared to give you every proof... the most absolute devotion, the fidelity and patience of a dog — time itself! Say a word, say that you have a little confidence in me... Why treat me like a buffoon, like a creature of an inferior race?...
— I treat you like everyone else.
— Why? Since you know that I do not love you like everyone else, that I am entirely devoted to you...
— I am accustomed to inspiring that feeling...
— But not as in my case... Let me believe that your feelings towards me are not dreadful ones...
— Oh! Dreadful — I assure you, no.
— What is dreadful for me is indifference...
— Ah! Well...
— Promise me you will not forget me during the few months I shall be away...
— That is not within my power...
— Allow me to remind you from time to time that I exist... perhaps I shall amuse you, perhaps make you smile... allow me to... to hope that occasionally, rarely, you will send me a word — just one...
— I beg your pardon?
— Oh! Without signing — simply this: I am well. And that will be all, and it would make me so happy...
— I sign everything I write, and I stand behind my signature.
— You grant me this permission?
— I am like the Figaro — I receive all correspondence...
— God! If you knew how terrible it is never to obtain a serious response, to be always mocked... No — tell me, let us speak seriously — it shall not be said that you had no pity for me in the moment of our parting! May I hope that my boundless devotion, my attachment, my love... impose on me whatever conditions and trials you like — may I hope that one day you will be more... gentle... that you will not always laugh?...
— In the way of proofs, I said, with some seriousness — there is only one.
— Which? I am ready for anything!
— Time.
— Very well — time. You shall see...
— That will please me greatly.
— But tell me — you have confidence in me?
— How so? I have sufficient confidence in you to entrust you with a letter, in the certainty that you will not open it.
— How dreadful! No — but absolute confidence...
— What a grand word! I exclaimed.
— And if the feeling is great? he said gently.
— I ask nothing better than to believe it — such things flatter our vanity. And look here — I am quite willing to have a little confidence in you.
— Truly?
— Truly.
That is enough for you, is it not. We go to the Exposition. I am vexed because Multedo is happy and pays court to me as though I had accepted him.
Being vexed, I begin to make things unpleasant to make him less comfortable; I jest about my passion for Cassagnac, but the handsome Multedo only laughs, because while extolling the Knight of Honour and spotless origins I say things about him that demolish the whole edifice.
— You say I laugh, Monsieur! Is it my fault if when you are serious you make me laugh!
I end with a barrage of increasingly gross impertinences, so that he goes away very cast down. He has all the symptoms of a man truly in love — he is timid, almost bewildered, ill at ease, different from what he was before; but the idea that he is after my dowry makes me cry out in horror.
I feel a genuine satisfaction this evening — Multedo's Love produces on me absolutely the same impression as Antonelli's. You see clearly that I did not love him! I was not even in love with him! I have been in love only with that scoundrel Alexandre.
I was very close to loving... but you know what a horrible disenchantment it was — the Knight of Honour... it is ugly.
You understand perfectly that I have no intention of marrying Multedo — I shall draw it out as long as possible and it will die out by itself.
— True Love is always respectable, I told him — you need not be ashamed of it; only do not work yourself up too much.
— Your friendship, then!
— An empty word!
— Then your...
— You are exorbitant!
— But what am I to say, since you will not allow me to arrive there by degrees, to begin with friendship...
— A chimera!
— Love, then!
— You are mad.
— Why?
— Because I detest you!
— You are a child.
He repeated it several times during the day with so tender and gentle a tone that it recalled the tones of another lyre... now with rusty strings, and which I despise. No doubt they invented all these horrors... to marry for money the daughter of a... My God, how base that is! I took him for a hero — they persuaded me he was only a man, and now they want him to be a wicked man. No — all of it is true; everyone says so! Friends by way of sparing one's feelings, others with brutal directness — and they add that he received a handsome dowry!
And it is Paul de Cassagnac who has done this.
La République Française, Le Rappel, and L'Évènement will tomorrow receive notices more or less like this one.
— France is thoroughly republican — stupid and rascally. That is Le Pays speaking of Monsieur de Girardin's journal, but the allusion escapes no one.
I consider that any Frenchman who buys a newspaper that insults his country so grossly ought to be fined!
One ought no doubt not to take notice of a journal of that kind — but one ought not to buy it; that is a punishment to which it will prove highly sensitive.
All this makes me forget to speak of the German paintings, which gave me great pleasure nonetheless.