Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 3 October 1879

Multedo came yesterday evening, as always combative, childish and tiresome. Very tiresome. Moreover my dear family believed it their duty to explain, support, soften or comment on everything I said. I am very weary and very irritated today.
What do you think of Hecht? What a sudden disappearance. The Jewish holidays are over, they explained his absence... But nothing astonishes me. It is only an agreeable or even bearable event that would plunge me into boundless surprise. Am I not doomed to petty vexations. The painting is not going well, my eyes are weakening, this morning I could barely see. I am lost, finished.
I stayed at home to try to do my composition but I could not render a line, at three o'clock Hecht arrived and he stayed until half past four.
He told Maman that he did not come more often because there are too great dangers for him at our house, that he is not twenty years old and that when a heart that has always been free gives itself at his age it was serious and terrible. Dirty Jew.
I do not even believe that he is really intimate with Gambetta. He tells me that I should contribute to the "Nouvelle Revue".
A long promenade in the Bois. But no Joseph given that this great man has accompanied Gambetta who arrived Wednesday evening at the Chateau des Cretes. So there we are until next month, at the opening of the Chambers. Someone has cast a spell on my painting. My God save me.