Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 19 October 1879

My aunt has made a will in my favor. The prediction of the fortune-teller the other day, then impossible dreams made me think of what would happen if she died without a will. MM. Georges and Alexandre etc. etc. would inherit. That would be the last straw... After the card-reader I went to Maman's where the whole family was and I told them half serious, half laughing that I had been predicted to lose many people: "one of you would only have to die, just think! to see those monsters inherit! Not Maman since after her it is her children Paul and me but my aunt."
Again these insipid Saturdays! The Goldsmids, Berthe, the Tchoumakoffs, M. de Tarente! An imbecile that one.
Rosalie broke my mirror and I dreamed of pearls...
I chose some drawings and went with Amanda to Saint-Marceaux's whom neither of us knows. I dressed myself modestly but with chic. I was afraid but there is a poodle there who already showed me a thousand kindnesses the first time we went there.
Saint-Marceaux is short, dark, a black beard, a bald head, a matte, pale complexion. He is only thirty-two years old.
Then I tell him my little story, I am passing through Paris, I have a brother who has been drawing for two years, he drew for a year, then he began to paint and the painting is not going very well, so I thought etc. etc. in short he asks me if I have drawings on me, I bring them to him from the carriage and he finds them very, very, very good, [words blacked out; the portrait] in sanguine "is stunning". But, he says, it is not you who drew them? You know sometimes one comes and says that to find out the truth!
- Oh! no, no Monsieur, I paint fans and I sent one to the Salon which was refused. But do these drawings look feminine.
- Not at all, on the contrary! And has he had advice?
- Yes monsieur from a foreign artist.
- And how old is this boy?
- Eighteen years.
- By Jove! I would have been fortunate if I had done that at eighteen! It is very good, but... it is even astonishing for so little time... That composition is stunning... But how... it seems to me that in there there is already a certain skill. But with what is there one can do much for after all it is well-constructed, it is accurate, it is good. Is it drawn at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts?
Yes, these are rather the drawings of a sculptor than of a painter, hmm... It has style, this movement is very pretty... The heads are less good than the overall compositions.
He recounts that sculpture is an ungrateful art etc. etc. all that one says of sculpture and that when he came to Paris, he went to M. Jouffroy's who asked him if he had means to live on? More or less, he answered. Then become a sculptor but if you are counting on that to live do something else.
Finally when he had said many fine things to me I told him that: "it is I." He is very amiable, very kind, he told me how to begin and promised to come give me advice. I no longer know everything but I am very pleased.
Yet it seems to me that he does not think what he says, that it is on purpose... I told him so and he answered me that it is not plausible since he does not know me and does not know where I come from.