Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Monday, 16 February 1880

We go to the Queen's, who is very gracious. I am still looking for a heap of things for my painting.
This evening at the Theatre Francais the premiere of Daniel Rochat by
Sardou. A veritable event. We have an excellent box for six. A superb house, people and the government. The Jew beside Mme Adam, who is with General Turr's wife (the sister of Mme Rattazzi), who is little or not at all received since she has been going in that society. But the Jew, we had met him on arriving; he even bowed very low, and then ogled very often. Mme Gavini is with us until eleven o'clock; afterwards she goes to Behir's. The box to the right belongs to Countess Walewska, the one to the left to... I no longer know; we looked as if we were together, all the more since old Madame Gavini was chatting with her neighbors. It looked very well. Only I was not dressed up enough, a dress of wool muslin, too much a day dress. It made me warm and annoyed me.
Naturally Arnaud is there; he came twice to chat with actresses seated in the balcony just below our box. For a moment I thought he was going to kiss one of them, so far did he lean down, but the illustrious idiot merely deposited his hat with his head beside the woman. A fine exercise in front of everyone, on such an evening. Besides, it is already dirty enough to come speak to these women, one of them being the one he took driving the other day in the Bois, Mlle Bianca. And I who hoped it was a woman of society... republican. They really conduct themselves in a... strange manner, these republicans. Not long ago Gambetta was seen in a box on an opening night with a little woman; in a screened box, it is true, but everyone in the pit could see while passing. As for the play, I must see it again; it seems to me there are tedious lengths, Genevan conversations; it has a Swiss look.
But there was so much shouting, applauding, hissing, approving, and protesting that one heard only half... The hero is a great orator, a sort of Gambetta, an atheist; the heroine an Anglo-American Protestant girl, very liberal, republican, but a believer. You see what this subject can produce at the present time.
At the exit, whichever way I turn, the Jew everywhere. I am obsessed by it.
It seems Juliette Lamber greeted Maman from her box.
In descending the staircase she was in front of us, and I maneuvered so as not to meet. Arnaud at the exit, but I act as if he did not exist, and in fact he does not exist for me since nothing can be made of him.
The memory of the blue fox troubles me less, but it is still annoying that this stupid fop imagines... worn-out subject.