Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 14 August 1879

We saw M. de Plancy.
The day is spent walking on the beach and meals at the hotel.
New faces arrive. Everyone knows the life of these towns, so I shall only have to speak if something interesting happens for me.
This good princess is mad, I believe. Bojidar did say that since the death of her daughter she has had her brain askew.
I expressed the intention of rising tomorrow at five o'clock and going to paint outdoors and the two boys wanted to accompany me, so their mother said that she forbade them to rise so early and that they had from nine in the morning until ten in the evening to amuse themselves and that by rising at five o'clock they would kill themselves.
She believes them to be girls and eight years old. I believe I have told you that she locks them in for the night and Bojidar, who is eighteen or nineteen, sleeps in her room. You understand well that I mock all this, only I do not want her to think that I consider her children as gentlemen and that I would make them do things prejudicial to their health. Do you not find this rather comical? With all this, nothing interesting happens, nothing came to interrupt... but it is all the same to me, after all. From tomorrow I shall work. My family is at the casino. I preferred to rest and dream at my ease, all the more so as one can hear from here an orchestra playing a serenade to a neighboring house and from afar this music is charming. I shall begin by falling asleep in an armchair, while listening to these celestial harmonies and breathing the so-fragrant air of seaside towns.