Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 26 July 1879

Yesterday Madame Gavini took me to the hippodrome, where I was bored.
As for politics — read the newspapers. It is quite absurd, and I am stupefied and unhappy. The painting is going badly.
A visit from the three friends — Mesdames Gavini, Randouin and Pernety, in deep mourning for her father-in-law. Vulgo, Adeline, Odette and Valentine.
The Tchoumakoffs to dinner.
I bought the first published volume of the memoirs of the Second Empire by G. de Cassagnac père — with the laudable intention of reading contemporary history as well as Bonapartist history — and on the first page I find a dedication that sends me plunging into the depths... Such things weigh on me dreadfully, and I shall not be able to breathe until I have become something.
And I shall become it. I am calm.

Notes

Vulgo: Latin, "commonly known as" — Marie gives their informal first names. ↩