Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 7 June 1879

Madame de Lesseps sent us all her seven children with three nurses.
But let us first say that the tone of my painting was not bad (for me, that is what matters) — but the construction! I was scolded.
Yet I ought not to despair — concentrating above all on colour, I forget construction, which I shall recover when colour no longer troubles me; one does not lose what one has. No matter — I am in a black cloud.
So, the Lesseps children are a curious thing. They are accustomed to being put on display and perform well-drilled movements. Within five minutes of arrival they were quite at home; then they asked me to paint their portraits, each posed in turn; I spent four or five minutes sketching all seven of them, and the eldest declared it very well done.
Then he wanted me to put numbers and names beneath each figure. Madame and Mademoiselle Tchoumakoff arrived, and I took the young lady to watch me try on a dress for tomorrow. Then Madame Gavini came during my absence. Maman left cards at the Randouins' and the Pernetys', and these ladies have already let two Saturdays pass without calling. Madame de Bailleul dined with us. Princess Karageorgevitch gave us tickets for the circus, where we go with her — but as there is the famous fête at the Opéra, there is not an enormous amount of elegance; afterwards we go to the Salon, which is lit by electricity. My aunt, the Princess, her sons, Dina, and I. We encounter Julian, and I amuse myself saying foolish things to him outside the Studio.
Going down to the sculptures we encounter Multedo, whom I tease, recovering a little wit for unkind remarks. In the end I come to life and we bring the Karageorgevitches home to supper. That lasted a quarter of an hour — then everything burned out and nothing remains but a charred wooden carcass, not even an ember.
Monday is the great Cassagnac session; Gavini had no tickets — that is to say, Arnaud no doubt gave him two, and he gave them to his wife and a friend, as Madame Gavini is going.
It is all the same to me — if I had tickets I would not go. I must work. To Julian, in whom I have confided, he speaks of it and I ask him whether he is handsomely paid by him. In short, what can one say? I am in the doldrums — that half-hour of gaiety has shown me even more clearly how sad I am.
Larderei was at the circus with a kept woman. He was coiffed and turned out with his buttonhole bouquet like a hairdresser's boy — though a pretty fellow.
Nothing remains for me but to paint — and if that fails, to kill myself.
What a brute this Cassagnac is. That shameful mother-in-law and all that... How does he explain it — how does he tell that story? He, the gentleman?
Oh, the beast — oh, the dirty beast.
He would have suited me — it would have been an end or a beginning; in any case it would have been a sufficient excuse to give myself when I accused myself of having abandoned the idea of a king or a millionaire.
I could have told myself: he is a political man, a future great man; I would have played a role, I would have aided him... [Words blacked out: Do you think that] this hidden wife and this well-known mother-in-law... do him any good?
I know that I esteemed him above a king — but all things considered, and now knowing what he is worth by the marriage he has made, tell me — did I overrate him in thinking thus? No, did I? It satisfied my vanities and at the same time was in accord with reality.
I am stupefied, knocked off balance, bored. I no longer even think of "conquests." I dress well but put no soul into it and never remember to think of the impression I produce. I look at nothing and no one, and I am bored. There is nothing but painting.
I have no more wit, no more readiness; when I want to speak I am dull or extravagant, and then...
I must make my will, for this cannot go on and I am perhaps going to die a natural death.