Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 11 December 1880

Tony told me that my head for the competition is the best thing I have done so far. Ah! What does it matter — this is no life!
The Queen of Spain is to give an evening party, and I wonder if we would be invited if Maman were here. At last! The de Lesseps, Hecht, Dieppe, I know not what else, form a horrible chaos in my head, and all I can do is burst into tears. After three years, to have come only this far.
I go to ask my aunt for five hundred francs to pay the harpist, and she answers me with the sempiternal phrase: I swear to you we have not a sou, but tomorrow or the day after, perhaps. That was the last straw for my exasperation!
Always the same thing!
Even if for once it were the truth, I have always been lied to! And never any money! We go nowhere, we do not even have a carriage; we receive no one. I have bought nothing for three months — two dresses on credit and a coat — and there is never any money!
I wanted a book the other day with a rare binding, and I am mad about beautiful books, and I did not buy it.
In short, this is no existence! Those who bring you into the world should concern themselves with you a little more than this! Give you a station, a career, a position — I do not know what I am saying, but I understand myself. Oh, the terrible people! Oh, the atrocious upbringing!
In all the foolish or stupid things I have done, it is they who pushed me. I do not speak of the last two or three years. For three years I have been solely responsible, no longer listening to them, and the foolish things they say no longer influence me. What an atrocious household, what habits!
I would prefer them vicious to this.
Disorder and avarice combined most stupidly.
It is like obsessing me with syrups, fire in my rooms, and leaving me to die of anguish... Ah, the atrocious existence! My very deafness is caused by them.
Krishaber was treating me, and having felt something strange in my ears, I was going to consult him when some gossip or other arose that kept me from going. I kept waiting for it to blow over, for Madame Krishaber to come to our house so I might dare return to theirs, but I waited in vain, and afterward it was too late.