Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 14 September 1880

The day before yesterday Soutzo arrived around two o'clock. My aunt invited him to dinner, and so he returned at seven. We spoke of indifferent things; he only told me that he was leaving.
That happens to you rather often, it seems to me...
"No — this time..."
This time you are leaving more than usual?
"I am going to Athens."
And to do what?
"Into the army."
"That is not a bad idea, though soldiering has become a rather stupid business since the invention of artillery..."
Yesterday he came back, and not finding us, told Rosalie he would return to take his leave of the ladies. At seven o'clock the young Athenian reappears. Together with my aunt they have called in a homeopathic doctor who seems to me as grim as Fauvel... I have tried conventional medicine for four years; I am going to try the other kind.
Now comes the farewell evening to be recounted. He begins by saying: "All the same, I am horribly sad to be leaving."
But here is the matter. 60,000 francs of debts. Werbranck has advanced the money, and the young man will repay him by deducting from his income, leaving himself only 600 francs a month — hence embarkation for the Greek army. So I mock him for thinking of nothing but money, and he goes back to explaining his circumstances, and then... but what is rather amusing is that the moment one does not speak simply, he does not understand. So I tell him with complete frankness that the only impulse of sympathy I have ever felt toward him was due to his stupidity.
"All the same," I say to him, "I was thinking this morning — what a pity you have not 500,000 francs a year. A stupid husband like you might perhaps be amusing... A marriageable man... For if one took the slightest trouble..."
But he appears to have sound instincts regarding money — though that too might be nothing but lies... And yet Courtès did manage to find a rich wife; this one could have found one too, especially with Werbranck's help. But he is young — twenty-one years old!
"All the same, I am very sorry to be leaving," he says.
And as he said nothing more, I turned round and saw him weeping great hot tears, then replacing his pince-nez to hide his eyes.
I wiped his eyes with my hands — I would not have dared do so had I felt the slightest emotion myself.
"You are nothing but a child — come now, no nonsense — will you stop?"
And through all sorts of jests I bring him to burst out laughing with me — through his tears — and this several times over. It was charming in its youthfulness.
"Is that how you spend the six months I granted you to try to please me? What a fool you are. Athens? It is fortunate that I had every clear intention of saying no — suppose it had been the contrary: you would simply have missed your opportunity! And as he remained dumbfounded, I mocked him for his stupidity."
"What I have clearly understood is that you have said no. Ah! I am delighted — enchanted, truly enchanted. Very, very glad... at least I know now... But why did you not say no to me at once?"
"Because I was hoping you would inherit from a relative during that interval..."
"That is a jest."
"It is the exact truth."
"Then it is no?"
"No. And what did you think? What — you imagined... is it possible!" And I began to laugh wholeheartedly.
"What — what I imagined? Why, that I was going to marry you — was that not it?!"
While setting off for Athens?
"It is not on 600 francs a month that I would dare marry you."
With three times as much, perhaps?
"Yes."
Not even then, you fool. Knock the stupidity out of yourself and tell me — how do you reconcile Athens with my six-month deadline?
"But I would have come back to hear the... no. For I am committed..."
There is no commitment between us!
"Yes — I am committed; you are free. But I — I... I shall never marry... and if you are married... well, if I marry ten years after you that would already be something..."
"Aha! There again are the precise and reasonable sentiments. But, my poor devil, you will never charm women. You are too reasonable, too logical, too calm. You resign yourself at every moment. You need something quite different, for heaven's sake! Had you come to tell me: I am going away because of you! — how differently that would have rung than: I am leaving to pay my debts!"
"To lie, then?"
"It could have been me."
At intervals we speak of other things, and I reproach him for not being a real prince; he sets about giving me explanations that I do not listen to, for the account of the sleepless nights, the rages, the fevers I have caused him makes me cheerful. He thinks of me every minute (I have thought of others too); he has not slept two hours a night for three months, but sat up smoking though disgusted with tobacco. I wanted to ask whether he had seen any women since he began to adore me — but that was impossible to ask.
I was thinking of other things while the poor devil was explaining which of his ancestors had reigned and how, and each time that "a régné" — "has reigned" — came back, I would add: "On the ceiling." That was wretched of me.
I am completely frank with him for the first time. I admit that I have searched within myself to see whether he is slightly agreeable or slightly disagreeable to me, and that I have found he leaves me absolutely cold.
Seeing me so often, so close, he says he had imagined the matter was settled. "Oh! I was mad, mad, mad!"
I quite believe it.
One had to be mad to believe I could marry you.
Indeed!
"What would you have — I had imagined it..."
Seeing me so good-natured!
"I was mad."
I understand that feeling, do I not. By dint of seeing someone, thinking of them, one imagines... and then one is stupefied to find that nothing comes of it, and that the person is nothing but a stranger to you...
Since he will marry no one but me — whom he "adores for ever" — I propose to him a position that is not very brilliant but more consoling than nothing at all.
"A friend, you say. Not a friend — that is nonsense." I propose to him that he become my en-cas. If I find no one better, you will always be there, close to hand, and I shall marry you. At which he cries out with vehemence that he will marry me just as willingly at the age of twenty-six as today.
So that is settled. Come — farewell and bon voyage. He holds my hands for a long time, weeps, and I — still unmoved and in high spirits — give him the famous Saint Matthew with this dedication: Homage from the author to Monsieur le prince Soutzo. But I erase that; it is not dignified enough... to a man who speaks to you of going to seek death in the fields of carnage — suicide being a crime and a stain to inflict upon his sisters — in any case he has his Saint Matthew with these words: to be read every evening. Without Soutzo's name, I can say he stole it from me, should the occasion arise! He weeps, he leaves, and he does not look it.
So there he is — my en-cas. I turn it all to ridicule and spare you the subtleties of my witticisms during this futile exchange... Everything passes quietly; there he goes, departed. I went to bed very calmly. I vaguely suspect he is a base actor, for if I felt him sincere, I would have some regrets at causing him grief. And I am absolutely calm.
But while I am writing — and poor Soutzo rolling toward Marseille — he is announced. He does not leave until Friday. That is a good joke. But I have nothing more to say to him. My position is clear and clean, my pride intact. One really must have done with it.
I shall not grant him the slightest private conversation. Enough floundering. And besides, none of it is clear — he will not manage to pay off 60,000 francs in eighteen months on 20,000 francs a year. He must have done something foolish here... In short, I have nothing more to do with it — I have occupied myself too long with this minor lordling, as an en-cas and nothing more. He is stupid, yet astute enough to have understood that I would be an irreproachable wife to whatever husband I took — which is why, when I speak to him of women's perfidy, he cites me as the exception. Yes — but that is me, me. What would be the point of being me, if all women were the same and if I were to do as others do.
There he is — the pilgrim. I received him like a slightly scolding and not unkind grandmother, a Louis XV grandmother. I left him to amuse himself with my aunt. I have no time to lose, and besides I am beginning to be very seriously angry.
Biarritz snatched away makes me see red. I weep as I write. Everyone — Mlle de Villevieille went to Aix where there was a great deal of society; everyone has walked, everyone has enjoyed themselves. I am buried alive. Probably God wills it. But it is too sad — I cannot see for weeping.