Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 1 October 1879

Here are journals and I have just read the two hundred pages of which the first issue of Mme Adam's review, Juliette Lamber, is composed. All this has unsettled me and I left the studio at four o'clock to promenade in the Bois with a new hat with which I cause a sensation but at present it is all the same to me. I find Mme Adam very fortunate.
I believe that you, you know me well enough to understand the influence that all these living questions exercise upon my poor head. There is nothing to be done in the matter of old loyalties... I still love violets but solely as flowers. The love for Paul de Cassagnac has vanished with respect and if I still have some weakness for him in the state of memory... it is his head, his speech and the ready-made chivalry that he put at the disposal of consumers... Banalities that one takes as words of the Gospel. I do not disown my knight; I explain him to myself. I am less than nothing, I do not exist for others but all this exists for me, living, attractive and despairing. I weep and I mock myself. I go over to the Republic and to all the new men and to new ideas.
Today here I am gripped by the "Revue nouvelle", who knows if at a given moment I might not go and enthuse over Prince Napoleon whom besides I prefer to Napoleon III and who is truly someone. No, you understand well that I jest with myself and that I am as advanced as it is possible to be. One must march with one's time especially when one has the real desire and irresistible need to do so. Never forget what I said long ago: "Cassagnac or another can make me Bonapartist or anything else, but..." etc. That is for those who will want to throw my imperialism in my face, my detractors at last! They will say that I am the Man. Possible. I followed Cassagnac hence the little consistency of my Bonapartism, but what is it that I am at present?
Ah ha! Is this not a proof of the purity of my convictions, convictions that I admit to myself and that I had before without admitting them to myself and without understanding myself. What the devil, one has been young and ignorant. I am only beginning to educate myself and to realize many things...
What does it matter! I am very unhappy.