Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 28 September 1880

A good day, begun in the night. I dreamed of Cassagnac. He was plain and unwell — but that is nothing. I understand now that one does not love for beauty. We were talking like two friends, as before; as we would talk again if we met! I asked only one thing: that our friendship remain within the permitted limits, so as to last. [Two lines crossed out]
That was also my dream in reality. In short, I have never been so happy as last night.
Saint-Amand arrives for lunch, fired up by my letter, written thus:
...something mad for entertainment.
Gabriel's father is giving dinner this evening to several grave Algerians to discuss the Tunisian affairs — they have properties there.
Old Gavini is among them, and Saint-Amand too, and Gabriel thought of announcing to his father two ministerial colleagues — and bringing my aunt and me along.
Imagine our arrival — old Géry had no idea. In short, it was delightful.
There is Monsieur le comte de Sancy, Allegro, and a someone-or-other — an Arab — this last was magnificent. He is an engineer, I believe, and on that account wished to talk to me of Latin, Greek, Horace, Livy, and so on!
"You may safely venture among your three fathers," Gabriel had said — old Gavini, old Saint-Amand, and old Géry — for: Dear Baron, we are going to the circus this evening with M. Gavini. I know the horror that place and the hams it contains inspire in you, but I am counting on your selflessness to join our party. Bring your young subordinate too, if he has not left. M.B.
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This buffoonery earns me an avalanche of compliments — I am this and that, and this winter an élite circle will form around me; he will bring me celebrities, all the somebodies, and so on and so on! I did not even need any of that. I woke up laughing and it did not stop. Besides — see the madness of the evening. Towards half past six the bell rings: it is Saint-Amand again and Gabriel, coming to propose something...
"...my father is also your father" — he designates me as the daughter of his father.
That dog Gabriel has certain intonations and words... thus, I don't know how he managed to say to me:
"If you wish to be adored even more than you already are by my father, tell him he has beautiful paintings."
It was charming. Saint-Amand is launching Gabriel — he told my aunt that if Gabriel listens to him he will have him sleeping with the most beautiful women in Paris.
How disgusting men are! It is not prudishness — but still...
To love without love! And is it nothing that we women are chaste... at least in body.
Where is the merit of being chaste in body when one is also chaste in soul?? I have thought foolish things since childhood — but also, if I loved someone, it would be true. [Top of the page torn] It is not even counted to our credit.
Gabriel brings back what I sent to Brussels — all of it preserved, along with the scrap of paper with the address of a pastry-shop that I gave him at the Opera. And my photograph is framed in a ravishing frame; he brings it for me to see, along with the penknife he gave me as a gift at the Opera. We are children. But Saint-Amand is not foolish, and leaves us to go alone onto the balcony, occupying himself with sipping small glasses of liqueur and keeping watch over us. It seems he can never marry himself, so he manages things for others... It is insane. You know those lists — confidences de salon — where one writes what one most values in one's friends, one's favourite authors, how one would wish to die, and so on.
I fill in Gabriel's list with pieties, saintlinesses, devotions, etc. Which allows him to venture some foolishnesses that I pretend not to hear.
As for the Algerians, they adopt me — I am their daughter. Géry has already promised to make me an unforgettable Oriental journey if we go to Algeria, and all three renew their invitations and promises.
I tell myself we shall have great fun, if Algeria does not turn into another Biarritz. The nobody — whose name I do not know — was extraordinary in saying goodbye: he began by declaring that he would be a father to me in Algeria, I would be his seventh daughter. "Yes, you shall command like a queen — we shall have lions, tigers, and for transport camels, and if there are none, I shall be too happy to serve as your camel, radiant to carry on my neck so ravishing a little cocotte — I mean poulette." Monsieur de Sancy fled so as not to burst out laughing; I thanked him solemnly.
Saint-Amand says to us: "The Crayfish" — and in the commotion... what commotion? My style! No — so I cut my finger and display the bright red blood with satisfaction; Gabriel hurries to wipe it with his handkerchief, and as it continued to bleed, he took my finger and drank the blood. But on the balcony we stayed barely a minute — our flirtations might have been noticed, in spite of Saint-Amand.
It is funny — Gabriel and I laugh into each other's eyes, but I take care to keep myself aloof, I don't want to appear to be touched by it, and I chatter incessantly, threading everything through with innocent glances and laughing the whole time.
Gabriel told me on the balcony that it was kind of me to have come, in a serious tone. And it rang out rather oddly.
He picks up the rose petals I throw... a heap of childishness... He is sweet. In any case what is always true is that I laughed well — oh, really well — and that despite it all I had the whole time a superb complexion, white, white and rose, without fatigue or flush. It is good to laugh. Now I shall probably have to pay for this day with tears.
I wore a dress of black canvas and black satin shoes, Louis XV goddess hairstyle.
No — but there it is: it is natural that Gabriel should leave. It must never be more than a sketch. I wish nothing from him; I do not even want him to be in love with me.
Ah! How many nuances there are in these things! We shall not speak of my dream — that is the drama; let us leave it. But in these light flirtations, vaporous and graceful as drawings of clouds on the sky... Things must remain thus; I cannot even imagine them otherwise.
[Two lines crossed out]
In short it was gay — I was intoxicated with laughter, and when I got home and undressed I was still laughing and singing couplets to my dogs, who listened.
It is two o'clock in the morning; it is all past and yet I still want to dance... and the couplet from yesterday.
And then:
What makes a nose, it's the poisoned young man, it's the poisoned young man.
Dumas fils says that young women do not love — they merely prefer — because they do not know what love is. But where the devil does Monsieur Dumas place love?
And first of all, one always knows approximately enough to know... And then what Monsieur Dumas calls love is nothing but the consequence and natural complement of love — not at all a separate, isolated, and complete thing in itself, at least for people with some decency. "An inevitable consequence often, and without which no love is possible," says the same Dumas — and he also calls it the ultimate expression of love. That I can accept — but to say that a girl cannot love: that is madness. I, for my part, know nothing of it — yet I feel clearly that there is something repellent in it with a disagreeable person, and that it is the ultimate expression of love when one loves.
Now there are also the mad ideas that pass through one's mind sometimes — but one knows well what they are... when the man is not repellent, when he is even agreeable as Gabriel is — but that has nothing to do with Love. As for me, what would horrify me most would be to kiss an indifferent person on the lips. I believe I could never do it — I would sooner endure... the rest — but the lips, never.
But when one loves. Ah! It is so different. Thus last night, in my dream, I loved — it has happened to me also when awake — well, it is so pure, so tender, so beautiful. Love is a grandiose and pure feeling; everything in it is chaste even... Monsieur Dumas's Love, which is not the end but only a consequence of what one feels — merely a means of loving more, of loving better what one loves.
Monsieur Dumas takes the woman because he has... love. I take love because I love the woman. I amuse myself reasoning about this to see what I shall think of it afterwards. It is a great curiosity.