begun Thursday 17 October 1878 — ended Friday 10 January 1879
Madame Gavini is in Paris; she came to see us yesterday, and we went for a walk together in the Bois.
I ordered the carriage for nine o'clock and, accompanied by my lady-in-waiting Mlle Oelsnitz, went to visit Saint-Philippe, Saint-Thomas d'Aquin and...
Paris is decked with flags, as on the 30th of June. The prizes are being awarded at the Palais de l'Industrie. It is impossible.... Oh! That School!...
Thanks to my opposition, Julian has promulgated a rule for place assignments.
During these last days of the Exposition I shall skip the atelier two afternoons a week to see the beautiful things. I went today with M. and Mme...
Gautier came to see us.
We had our little placement competition. A life-size head in one hour. Everyone did reasonably well; it will be difficult to judge.
Imbecile, idiot, clumsy oaf, fool. Poor man, poor great Newfoundland, poor black pearl.
Uncle Etienne finds Mme Tarnowsky at church — an aristocrat from Konotop — and we bring her home to lunch. While she is still with us, the Princess...
Competition. I make a drawing, but as the model is a fat, blonde woman it will be ugly.
To the Exposition with the Gavinis.
"You look quite crushed, my dear," said de Daillens when I came to her around noon on leaving the atelier.
De Daillens was in the carriage with us when, near Doucet's shop, we encountered Mme Gavini, who called out to me and ran after me.
I called on Princess Karageorgevitch, and then I no longer know what or whom.
To the Exposition with the Gavinis. Mme Gavini finds that I have a charming character — the easiest in the world to live with — that I am perfectly...
Young Gavini (the nephew) went to the deputy Eschassériaux fils to ask for tickets — there is perhaps some hope.
I shall no doubt resort to disguising myself as an old woman to go and queue tomorrow at Versailles and take my place with the rabble. For I must...
At eight o'clock I was in town searching for props, and at ten o'clock I was dressed as an elegant old lady when tickets arrived from my savior...
Princess Eristoff came to stay with her niece Mlle Bashkirtseff, and M. Gambetta gave her two Versailles tickets with the promise of coming to call...
Yesterday, then, we went to Versailles with the tickets from that cherub Gambetta.
A shameful defeat! Not a medal at all. Which will let those imbecile women who are talented and didn't even compete crow triumphantly.
I amused myself nailing scraps of fabric I had to the walls, arranged as trophies with palettes.
Today we learn a thunderbolt of news. Mme Yorke is dead. In the full bloom of life, barely thirty-two years old, so gay, so carefree!
Robert-Fleury came in the evening. It would be misleading to repeat to you the encouragements he gave me after a long lesson; if what such people say...
Today Robert-Fleury was very pleased with Breslau and urged her to submit something for the Salon, adding that she would be accepted — he would...
After looking at Mme de Cassagnac I believed myself faded, and after the article in the *Patriote Niçois* I began to wonder whether I was a woman......
Robert-Fleury was at the atelier; afterward I called on Mouzay to have her read the article and to chat with her daughter, which always gives me...
This stupidity can only be explained by the numbing torpor that gains on them more and more.
This evening after my bath I became so suddenly pretty that I spent twenty minutes looking at myself.
Breslau painted a cheek so lifelike and true that I — woman, artist, rival — wanted to kiss that woman's cheek...
I am frightened by Breslau's future. I am irritated by it, darkened, saddened. Is that not wretched of me!
Robert-Fleury spoke to me again "from the point of view of a serious artistic future, a future as a talented painter"!
Nadine slept in my room, and Paul too — he was afraid of dead Juliette!
I turned twenty yesterday, or I am turning twenty today.
I go to the Gavinis' and there make the acquaintance of the young Duc de Feltre — one of the youngest members of the Chamber.
I have made a conquest of the Gavinis; Madame speaks of me at home and elsewhere in the most extravagant terms — Filippini told me so, and besides, I...
The very name of Cassagnac fascinates women — these excellent women!
I dream that Walitsky comes back, and that Dina and Rosalie, dead, come back too. I beg them to go away: "You are dead — go away, I am afraid!"
Our ladies began by announcing that M. and Mme de Cassagnac would be coming to dinner on Sunday. Whereupon I screamed like a child and repeated fifty...
Cassagnac could neither come nor bring his wife — he left today or yesterday for the Gers.
Let whoever wants explain the enthusiasm one feels for Rome.
An engraving showing Ingres and [blank in the manuscript] on the terrace of the Trinità dei Monti in Rome, with the cupola on the horizon — it...
I took Nadine and Paul to the Chamber. The return is made with Gavini, Baron Larrey, Prince d'Arenberg, and Baron d'Ariste — one of the seconds in...
"Telegraphed from Plaisance, Gers, 5 December: The people of Plaisance turned out on Tuesday to the Château du Couloumé, despite the six kilometers...
Today is the invalidation of the Duc Decazes. We all go, with Paul and Gavini, who joins us at the exit and with whom we travel.
Madame Gavini and Goldsmid — who is married and asking to present his wife. They say she is not from an entirely fashionable family...
I dreamed that Robert Mitchell, dining at the Grand Hotel beside me, said: "Mademoiselle Marie—"
All day I searched for apartments with Nadine, and then I went to Mme Gavini's, who took me to the Opera in the evening.
Mme Gavini's sister writes asking her to tell "your charming Russian that I adore her from your descriptions — she may not care, but tell her all the...
I have rarely been sadder than in these two days... I have been working little of late, and domestic life here is insupportable.
The wretch — how she must have fluttered her eyelids, thinking that speech you have just read was addressed to her! Such words, for that woodcock.
It freezes, it snows.
I have rarely been so morose, so lost. Paul behaves well — I find him almost too proper.
Breslau invented that I had said something foolish about Amélie; whereupon I delivered a speech sharp, brief, and extremely polite — to the point of...
Once again M. Georges is being tolerated and they hide it from me. The night before last he came at night to shout and frighten everyone.
Monsieur my father has arrived.
It goes without saying that I do not go to see him. Paul caught fire — poor boy.
Madame Gavini invites me to the Théâtre-Français, but Nadine is leaving this evening.
My father lunches with us. He bores me completely, and I trust he feels all my coldness.
Yesterday at supper my mother infuriated me again. She pretended to believe a reconciliation possible.
My mother is again at that Hottentot's. Paul asked her to go, because the night before last, after the theater, Maman and my aunt had promised to...
My week has been lost for the studio. I had wanted to take advantage of it to see a play in which an actor performs whose accent, I am told, recalls...
With that I rested my head on the sofa and fell asleep in the finest fashion until eight o'clock this morning.
I have resumed my work.
The maneuvers my father employs to take Paul away — whom I wish to keep until the end of January — are beyond description.
Monsieur de Morgan has sent a bonbonnière.
What I envy is the freedom to walk alone, to come and go, to sit on the benches in the Tuileries gardens and especially the Luxembourg, to stop...
Maman, Dina, Paul, and M. Bashkirtseff have left for Nice this evening. Maman goes to supervise the packing of the furniture.
Maman, Dina, Paul, and M. Bashkirtseff have left for Nice this evening. Maman goes to supervise the packing of the furniture.
We have given up our apartment and are lodging in two rooms on the third floor above the mezzanine we occupied before the Avenue de l'Alma apartment...
There is a little riot at the studio. I did a Cassagnac, as usual on these occasions — and as those women are unaccustomed to speeches, they were...
I have just read *Le roman d'une femme* by Dumas fils. Rarely does one encounter anything more revolting and more odious. It is immoral — and yet it...