Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 25 April 1880

A promenade in the Bois, where one encounters heaps of familiar faces — only Paris offers such displays.
Gabriel bows twice.
Maman claims to have found his calling cards and those of his father on the dining room mantelpiece. New cards that the servant put there and perhaps forgot.
The vile Joseph is absent, but since the description of my future husband is no longer the same, he interests me very little.
Soutzo and the Mouzays at dinner. The Mouzay ladies fly into a fury because Maman, with her usual tact, compares me to Bonnat, to Carolus-Duran, etc. Mademoiselle de Daillens, who has been painting for twenty years and who was already a great artist when I was eleven, is naturally vexed; her mother is furious. They end up — indeed, begin — by saying that I shall never sell my works for as much as I intend, except to admirers, and they call Soutzo a brat, an imbecile, etc.
[Written across the page: Soutzo is determined to buy my Salon painting at any price, but if I sold him one for charity, I shall never sell otherwise. Just think what people would say! I shall sell to strangers, yes!] "Never, my dear Marie, will you have as much success and happiness as I wish you, but your mother will make you ridiculous, and you do not deserve to be made ridiculous — you are worth more than that!"
There was both truth and anger in that. In short, the old woman understood, in her outburst, that Maman was saying I was as accomplished as Bonnat and the others. In any case, everything calms down — these storms are frequent and never serious.