Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 22 August 1879

The races, but I would not even take up the pen, all this passed flatly for me, had I not to say that I saw up close the Princess de Sagan, nee Seilliere. Finance married to aristocracy. But rarely has a Princess by birth had a better air. They do not find her pretty but they grant her an astonishing air of breeding for a woman who is not well born. She has had much success and the Prince of Wales is said to be her lover each time they meet, recently the Prince led the Princess his wife to Mme de Sagan's. I always wondered at her successes hearing the descriptions made of her:
Tall, dry, long, a large nose, blonde and infinitely distinguished. It is true, brutally so.
For me she is one of the most ravishing women I have seen. Much less beautiful than Mme de Pourtales or Mme de Mouchy but more agreeable.
Tall, the shoulders high, thin but graceful. The hair real or dyed, of a golden chestnut blonde color that appears natural.
A pale and yellowish complexion, [but of an] agreeable tone. No rouge. Gray eyes of a graceful cut and of a sweet and calm expression. A nose strongly aquiline to begin with and then lowering, a nose of a nobility and royal character, the nostrils and the mouth are of an adorable drawing. I do not understand that they say her nose is large, it has the air of beginning like a nose that will go far but by an unexpected [way] which forms as it were an angle and very gracefully it returns to the face. They told me she was ugly. How is it possible. This woman is forty years old, perhaps more, she is adorable.
The foot is enormous and loosely shod, either it is exquisite and she fears to damage it or it is ailing... and then farewell to her charms! The Marquise de Galliffet is her intimate and inseparable friend, they say she was beautiful, I do not believe it and she displeases me. Badly made and badly dressed. The Princess de Sagan does not dress well either.
O sublime Balzac, you are the greatest genius in the world. Whichever way one goes one always finds oneself in his sublime Comedy, it seems he had always come and copied from nature. These two women especially by their provenance, their figure, their life, make me think of Balzac, that great, that inexhaustible, that incredible genius.
My family returned from the theater. They find Mme de Sagan ugly. It is moreover what everyone says. How then does it happen that I see her so charming. I grant that she is not pretty but with my artist's eye I am seduced by certain qualities of drawing of the lips and the nose with such sharp edges. She has neither withering of the cheeks nor bags under the eyes and then exquisite manners.