Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 17 July 1880

Tony told me that if I do several studies pushed as far as this one, it will do me a great deal of good. That it is a likeness, very well drawn. This is seriously done, it is studied; unfortunately the general tone lacks solidity. The eyes, good; the nose, very good, etc., etc. In short, I preen myself and am more and more the leader of the studio. As for Amelie, I speak to her of Julian without naming him, with hints, smiles, nothings: she always understands, and we are on the best of terms.
I shall not recount my mad dashes to the shops and to the studio where I still had an eye to do. Oh yes! It is Doucet, Julian's favorite pupil, who has the Prix de Rome. Mlle de Villevieille treats us to punch upstairs in our quarters. Julian pays for one downstairs and runs himself to Lefebvre or Doucet. We cry "Down with Julian!" and "Long live the Commune!"
I went to mother Gavini at one o'clock and gave her an appointment at my house at five --- an appointment I missed thanks to my dressmaker. Saint-Amand, who came this morning, comes to say goodbye at six, and at seven Gabriel arrives. He has lost that bloom of youth he had, and he has very little hair left, at his age!
At any rate, we are not leaving until tomorrow evening.
Savarre dresses the Audiffrets. Those girls get terribly on my nerves. They lead the most fashionable elegant life, and one finds them everywhere --- at Biarritz, at Trouville, everywhere. At every official ball and in the most exclusive salons of the Faubourg. That Spanish woman is prodigious, with her convent retreats and her priests. I thought them unhappy and living between the Bailleuls and Mme de Poilly from time to time. I cannot tell you how wounded and humiliated I was to know them so well placed everywhere. But what is the use of getting worked up thinking about it!
I am unhappy.
Painting! Yes, but in the meantime I am withering in obscurity!
"I thought there must be some extraordinary motive driving you to work," said Julian, "a man, finally, for whom you wanted to be something. You really must have been driven by something exceptional to bury here that bloom one has only a short time and that you had when you arrived here, instead of wearing it in the world. You might not have had beauty, whatever you like, but you had a... bloom that it was truly a pity to bury here, between these four walls."
I wanted to go to the countryside, a real countryside where there was no one. But that is not enough. Happiness would be to be able from time to time to withdraw to uninhabited lands, to islands with strange great trees, to the world of Paul et Virginie. To see the sunrise and savor the night all alone in the most absolute calm. A wild country, great trees, a pure sky, mountains gilded by the sun... an air such as one has no idea of here, an air that is in itself a felicity, instead of the horrors one breathes here... But for such an existence, one needs money. And I would not even want a beloved man in that solitude. All alone --- the supreme pleasure.