Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 21 December 1880

For two days I have had a return of tenderness for Cassagnac, and I can hardly explain it, for this man's opinions I do not share and do not believe sincere — which is more serious. If his bigotry is real, I could not endure it were we to live together. His political course seems to me so absurd that I could not help repeating it to him all day long. My sincere republicanism revolts at this role of monarchist and "conservative" — that absurd label used every day. Likewise for that of "revolutionary" applied to republicans. And when one cannot in conscience call them that, one calls them satiated, fattened, aspiring to tyranny. O good faith! O good sense!
Therefore, as a citizen I cannot endure Cassagnac; as a political man he is my enemy, and I find him absurd and without prospects.
And I do not know if I would prefer to believe he is convinced rather than to believe he is playing a role. No, I would prefer that he tell me that, having committed to this path, he is forced to walk it, but that he does not believe he has arrived — he is not stupid enough to be sincere. I am surprised to prefer someone with whom I am not entirely in agreement, or rather it makes me ill at ease and prevents me from loving him... No, I love no one; only from time to time he returns, and it seems he is the only possible being.
Yet I have seen him little, and what I have thought and written of him is monstrously disproportionate to what we have been to each other — two strangers. But I, in my solitude, have worked all this; I have pulled and stretched it so much that it has become a fabric large enough to wrap me entirely.
Cassagnac and I have never exchanged a sensible word, an intimate conviction, a serious idea. He spoke well sometimes, but as an orator. We talked only once, at 71 Champs-Elysees when he came to dinner, and even then I was so afraid that I laughed the whole time, my fingers frozen and my face on fire, my voice strangled by I know not exactly what. Striving to answer boldly, I often remained foolish, aware of his declarations of friendship and his oath never to regard me except as a sister. We have talked only that once, then — and even so! And it is frightening the proportions things take when one has all one's days to think about them, and for months no new impression comes to counteract the old one.