Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 30 October 1879

We go by tram to the Cluny Museum. The Karageorgevitches, MM. de Tarente, Turquan, Johnstone and Berthe. And ourselves. It is not wildly gay but Berthe and I unearthed some improper things while these gentlemen were amused by our innocence and laughed at seeing us pass in front of heaps of things without seeing. From the point of view of artistic pleasure it is not thanks to the pleasant company in which I found myself. I will go another time alone.
Those people bore me. Neither pleasure, nor profit.
France is a charming and amusing country. The Riots, the Revolutions, the Fashions, the Wit, the Grace, the Elegance.
All that finally gives life charm, the unexpected. But do not look there for serious government nor virtuous men (in the ancient sense of the word) nor marriages of love... Nor even true Art. They are very capable, the French painters, but apart from Gericault and at present Bastien-Lepage, the divine breath is lacking. And never, never, never will France produce what Italy and Holland produced in their special genre.
Beautiful country for gallantry and pleasure but the rest... Well it is still that and other countries with their solid and respectable qualities are boring sometimes. Besides if I complain of France it is because I am not married. France for young girls is an infamous country. And the word is not too strong. One cannot put more cold cynicism into the coupling of two beings than one puts here in marrying a man and a woman. Commerce, trafficking, speculation are honorable words applied properly, but they are infamous applied to marriage and yet there are none more just to describe French marriages.
Around five o'clock I went out with Berthe and we went to see the shops on the boulevards. It was too dark to work but light enough to walk.
Berthe is elegant though simple and I too. Hats on our foreheads and black dresses...
Nevertheless I am pretty and this even pleased me because we met Cassagnac face to face; I showed slight surprise and he greeted me, I made a friendly nod, as if we had seen each other the day before, while turning red. But it is cold and it is a pretty blush. After we pick up Multedo and go back up the boulevard and pass Cassagnac so that he can see that I am tall and slender and that I have a splendid figure and that I am not afraid of him since I turn around to see him... I did turn around but too quickly and saw nothing. The essential thing is that he sees that I am as if there were nothing. He is magnificent and I adore him. There. It is a pity it is cold, when we stopped to chat with Multedo after having seen the other I was seized by a violent shiver and if it had not been cold I could have believed... besides it was both. I find no one in the world like Cassagnac and most certainly I am at his feet. He is handsome, he is sympathetic, he is charming, he is good. He is the only being in the world who is my equal, my superior, at whose knees I would wish to be. So when I adore Gambetta or any great man I am at his feet and it seems to me I would speak to him as one speaks to God if he deigned to raise me to him, but... these are not men; they are heroes, geniuses before whom one is in ecstasy... while this one is indeed a man, my man, my other half... in spite of all the Acard girls on earth. She did not even bring him a dowry, they deceived him, she has almost nothing. At least as regards fortune and as, as hips he must regret me.
To have for a wife a dark worthless woman, ill-made and stupid! with a smooth skin... Too bad for him. I did all I could.
This evening we go with the Gavinis to see a boring operetta.