Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 31 July 1878

Now one of the fashionable Petersburg households joins our company, as well as old Prince Ouroussoff, whose sister, married to Monsieur Maltzov, is an intimate friend of the Empress. He has the air, according to Dourassoff, of a nineteenth-century philosopher — a charming conversationalist besides, and a man of the world, old school. As for Dourassoff, he accompanied me on a long walk over hill and dale this morning.
The ladies think that the princes' indifference grates on me. — This spoiled child, says Madame Antonsky, who is accustomed to seeing her slightest whims carried out, is wounded by the coldness — apparent, in any case — of these gentlemen...
But since others speak of it, I shall tell you that I have never looked at them closely — yet I can say that the younger, Hans (eighteen years old) is tall, slim, fair, with a rather fine large nose, small eyes, a mischievous mouth, no moustache, head bowed — the air of a young wolf. The other, Auguste, twenty-four or twenty-five, shorter, dark, with very beautiful eyes, a black drooping moustache, a velvety skin such as I do not think I have seen on a man, and a very pale complexion which would be admirable were it not the result of illness.

This evening I posed before the mirror like Dannecker's Ariadne in Frankfurt... and that, you see, spares me the trouble of describing myself at length — if you wish to know what I look like, go to Frankfurt and look at the Ariadne. Even the toes, which are not classical (in that the second does not project beyond the big toe), are like mine — and I assure you this pleased me.