Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 3 June 1880

Yesterday they lunched here, and Soutzo came back for dinner. It is a bit much. But we spent a singular evening.
My aunt left us alone for a long time. I had a neuralgia, I was cold and played the invalid, saying I was going to die, that I felt the disease, that it was finished. Soutzo was pale and very troubled; he broke his hat to pieces while telling me — I pressed him hard — that his family wants to marry him off and that things are far enough advanced that he must absent himself for a few days to break it off.
"When one wants to break it off, one says no. If you absent yourself, it is because you want it."
"But no."
"But yes. Besides, why don't you want to? Your heart is not taken, is it? Well then."
"No doubt my heart is not taken, but I do not want to."
"I see you are still holding out for Mme de Bailleul — no! For your washerwoman."
He wanted to leave; I held him back. "Tell me about it."
He took my hands; I let him, complaining of dying, telling him I was afraid to be alone, begging him to stay.
"You are good to devote yourself" — I meant to say, but the habit of mocking prevailed, and I put such an accent on it that he understood: "You're a good one, you!"
I raged to see that he did not declare himself, and I prayed that he would. My God, I think I would consent to be his wife, or something of that sort.
His slowness gave me a fever. I repeatedly took my head in my hands or hid my face, sighing, closing my eyes, my forehead burning and my hands icy.
"My God, what is the matter with you?"
"I do not want to die."
I took his hands myself; he kissed mine twenty times, looking at me very closely. I closed my eyes several times. He had removed his pince-nez — you know those beautiful, disturbing eyes...
"I love you," he said to me, very low.
"Ah!" I said, without any sort of languor. "I forbid you to joke like that."
"But I am not joking — but I love you. But I bore you — but you will mock me. I am mad to have told you."
"What — is it true then?"
"Yes, true."
"Well, it is a sentiment that does you honor."
"You see — you are laughing."
"I am quite serious. It proves you have good taste and that you are not as ordinary as I thought."
We were holding hands.
"Ah!" I said, smiling, "that changes things. You are no longer my old nanny after the secret you have just confided to me."
We no longer spoke, or almost not, my hands in his and eyes in eyes. "I love you," he said to me from time to time, kissing my hands, and I replied as softly: "Truly? Say it again; it pleases me. Do not think I mock you. So you are one of my adherents, and I protect you."
"And will it last long?"
"Does it depend on me?" he said, looking at me.
A reply that can be something profound and charming or else entirely banal.
"A love that does not believe itself eternal is not respectable," I said, remembering Balzac.
"Why then did you say your heart was free? When did you lie?"
"The first time."
"Well no — there really no — you don't look it, really no."
"Oh, what proof you give!"
The eternal response... "And since when?"
"Since always, almost..."
"Bah!"
"Only you laugh — you say to yourself: the poor devil."
"Goodness, but no — you interest me. So you love me?"
He nodded yes.
"And it amuses you? Amuses!"
"Well no — it makes you happy?"
"Yes."
"Yes, that must make one happy, yet you really don't look it. Give me your word of honor."
"My word of honor."
"Yes... well, it is not that it surprises me... Do not fear that I triumph too much — I am accustomed to these things. I shall not mock you. For in short, I do not love you."
"Do you think I was mad enough to believe it?"
"No, but one hopes, one desires at least..."
"Where will it lead me?"
"Then..." — and I made myself sweet and kind — "yes, on that account you are sacred to me," I said smiling, "but go away."
"I shall come back tomorrow?"
"If I am not dead."
"But what ideas are these!"
"Since I am ill, since if I have this disease I shall die..."
"I shall come tomorrow to hear news of you... you permit?"
"But yes."
I went immediately to bed and fell asleep at once, but that "I love you," so low, so ravishing, made me start several times while painting, and in the afternoon I was all feverish. He came around six o'clock, with a pale face and dark circles under his eyes.
"Can one present oneself in a respectable house with such a face?" I said to him, laughing.
"You are impossible," my aunt told him.
"You went to bed at eight o'clock."
"No, I did not sleep at all... I wrote letters."
Or else the agitation caused by me went to end ignobly in some dirty place... In short, perhaps he is innocent and simply stayed up thinking of me. How nice. Yes, but I have such a large dowry. He dines out and was to return in the evening.
What is the good of all this? I should like to see the face my family would make if I said I had been, that I am close to believing him a possible husband.
My family would give him to me willingly, but that I should take him myself instead of crying out with indignation — that would astonish them nicely, and it is they who would cry out. Why marry him? As for intelligence... mediocre. I often spare him, not liking easy triumphs. I cannot speak to him openly as to an equal, a peer. I am with him a little like Julian with the foreign students — he speaks pidgin to make himself understood... He is not rich. There is the main reason. Otherwise, as a position, it is the dreamed-of ideal.
A great lady, well supported and a foreigner in France. But not rich. As for loving him, I do not love him — that is beyond doubt. We would not have 100,000 francs between us, for my family must live too. When the exchange rate is good, we have 100,000 francs a year. But one must not count on more than 80,000 francs, of which they would give me as much as possible — 65,000 francs, for example. And he... let us say 15,000 francs a year. It is quite humiliating to say, but perhaps he has more. If he had 30,000 francs, it would be almost possible... and even then!
I put 30,000 francs because there are the mother's 80,000 francs, which will be divided among four — that will give him more than 30,000 francs then. Let us say 35 — no, leave it at 30, that is safer. If we had 100,000 francs a year, it would be almost possible. But why hurry? Perhaps I shall find better... I am only twenty-one, after all. But with my devil of a character, I would like to manage, keep, prolong this one in case I find nothing better. Eleven-ten — he will not come now. Goodnight.