Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 8 September 1878

Sunday, 8 September 1878

To mass and then to the promenade (not round the Lake). A crowd of Neapolitan acquaintances, but there was no speaking to anyone in that hell of carriages.
The Mouzays come in the evening; I show the Corsican's letters to de Daillens, and we review last winter and promise to do it all again. Yes, but...
"Do you think," I said to him, "that it is possible?"
"Good Lord... perhaps yes."
"Difficult!"
"Yes — for that sort of event... not a party, but a Venetian episode — those five women filing silently through the doorway before that motionless man who lifts the curtain. It is truly an amusing page."
"Do not speak of it, Madame!"
"Mademoiselle Acard will have everything — except that."
"We have taken the... the almost-poetry, and there is nothing left."
"Yes — how to go to M. Acard's house? We could go to M. de Cassagnac's, but..."
"And to think, Madame, that there is not another."
"Good Lord, no."
"Another who is poseur enough, actor enough, Cassagnac enough for that... what a misfortune!"
"What a misfortune!"
I warmed myself at these memories, and others... and I am furious... I was stupid then.