Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 2 February 1881

I come home all aglow from having spoken openly about Cassagnac — about my feelings, that is. I was going to a women's meeting, and the idea struck me to carry off Julian; I told him that as de Daillens could not come, only he could rescue me from my predicament — I sent my coachman to fetch him, whisked him away, and off went the two citizens.
The hall was stifling — it was a different committee from ours, we arrived at the end. Back on the rue Vivienne, Julian, instead of getting down, went on with the story of a man who was a true tamer of women... extraordinary tales.
All of them succumbed to him — and he an admirable brute of beauty and seduction... [Written crosswise: We came to speak of it apropos of the new Dumas play, of the virtue of women.] This — or not even this — brought me to the subject of Cassagnac; I was itching to speak of it. But let me first say that it appears Julian is taking great pains over my Salon submission, articles are ready to go out... It is not on account of my worth but a need of his nature to be kind — there is not even occasion for gratitude; we speak of it very amicably. I took him up at half past nine, the conversation lasted twenty minutes, and it is half past eleven when he proposes to see me home. "With pleasure — I want to talk of Cassagnac," I tell him. Except for the letters so humiliating to me, Julian knows everything, and he is the only creature in the world with whom I speak of it. The cab-driver must have thought we were on a romantic adventure, sitting there two hours at the corner of the rue Vivienne.
Having listened to these tales of the abominable man who took every woman, I listened to myself speaking of Cassagnac and of feelings in general. The darkness of the carriage and my black wig encouraged me to speak sincerely and without joking.
Think of it — Julian had believed I had given myself entirely to Cassagnac.
I am not sorry to say aloud what I have thought or written — it gives a more precise measure of things... Julian truly believes I loved him, and that the day chance brings us together again, if he makes a sign, I shall obey...
It is possible... At moments I feel myself melting into an immense tenderness — this man whose politics are absurd, this man who has lost all glamour, this man whom I saw as great and ideal and found simply ordinary, this man... and yet there is still something... what then is this feeling, if it is not love?
Perhaps I set that famous love too high — and perhaps in seeking it so high I overshoot it... then perhaps that is what it is... It is inconceivable.
In any case I am glad to speak of it — I enjoy telling the story... and truly, said aloud, it is childish.
I am dreadfully childish and sentimental and innocent, it seems. It cannot be possible that a woman like me should have such delicate, laboured inner feelings... and believe what I believe...

Thursday, 3 February 1881

Before my eyes I have the portraits of my mother and father when they were betrothed.
I have hung them on the wall as documents. According to Zola and other, more celebrated philosophers, one must see the causes to understand the effect. I was born of a mother exceedingly beautiful, young, and in good health — [words blackened: she has] dark hair, dark eyes, a radiant complexion.
And of a fair, pale father, of delicate health, who had led a dissolute life to the point of becoming ill from it — (it seems one could quite easily have obtained a divorce, as he was ill from the beginning); himself the son of a very vigorous father and a sickly mother who died young; and the brother of four sisters more or less hunchbacked from birth. Grand-papa and Grand-maman were soundly constituted and had nine children, all healthy, tall, some of them handsome — for example Maman, Étienne, Wladimir, and that horrible ruined man, and also Émile. The ailing father of the illustrious subject before us became strong and healthy; and the mother, dazzling with health and youth, became weak and nervous — owing to the horrible existence imposed on her: the brothers' scandals, her incessant interventions which wore out her youth in anguish obtaining pardons and indulgences from the authorities, driven as she was by Grand-maman, who adored her horrible son. Thanks to that adoration, and to Grand-papa's as well, a cult was instituted whose god was that man — and that is what has ruined us all.
I finished L'Assommoir the day before yesterday. I was almost made ill by it — so seized by the truth of the book that it seemed to me I was living and conversing with those people.
I was indignant at living and eating while these horrors were going on around me, below... Everyone ought to read it — one would be better for it... But I have calmed down, above all because any isolated action of mine would be imperceptible.
Who then has denied the social question?
Oh! yes, everyone must engage with it — oh! yes, they must. But socialists are treated as scoundrels and madmen, and socialists themselves often veer into utopianism! O abyss! And I am not even capable of writing a newspaper article!
And besides — the newspapers that would be read won't want it!
To return to something else: I am truly very childish. The other day a classmate was writing a letter during the meal; I came over and wrote a few wild sentences in the middle of her text, without knowing to whom or about what. We laughed over it, and today she hands me the sheet — the recipient is begging her to forward it to her unknown correspondent. It is as wild as what I had written — a reply, at last. Such are the childish things that make me laugh all by myself.
To return to yet another thing: I will tell you that it seems to me I have spoken with Cassagnac and that I believe I love him... But you know — all that, written or spoken — for I do not think I ever think of it except to compose novels in the evening to help me fall asleep...
It is curious and I cannot explain it: it seems to me that it happens outside of myself — you know, like the hero of Mademoiselle de Maupin who has Rosette in every way and can never persuade himself she is his mistress. No matter how much I write and say that I love this man, I do not believe it — I do not think it; I believe it only while writing it, then nothing. Julian says I bore the great blow very well, but that he saw me badly shaken — leaving my work without knowing why, then coming back abruptly, going away again.
I noticed nothing — it seemed to me I was as always; and when I knew myself to be agitated, it was for other reasons, for a ball, for society, and Julian attributed that to Cassagnac. No — I was calm. It had stunned me, and I resigned myself before knowing for certain that he was marrying. I was only willing to struggle during the seven days before the event; until then I told myself it was only a moment to get through, and one had to close one's eyes and stop one's ears. Clearly his great force lay in the glamour that surrounded him at the time I met him. My imagination only pictured him in court breeches, the great red sash across his chest, receiving the young Emperor on the steps of the Corps Législatif.
Now everything is withered! But the imprint dates from then.
So old father Julian and I agreed.
Perhaps Julian is right [words blackened: and my agitation was un]conscious — that would be the real thing, then... Well — I am like poor Albert, except that for him it was the body and for me it is the mind. I write that I love, I act as though I love, I say I love to a confidant — and I myself do not believe it. I tell you: it happens outside of me. I myself remain eternally indifferent. And if I say it, it is because Julian fills my head by believing it. Also, Julian calls all my stories "schoolgirl nonsense" and says I do not know life and my reasonings are made up. Julian thinks as so many books and plays have thought — and revolted me. Love, most of the time, is not a consequence wrapped in a heap of delicate things, but a goal. For that matter it revolted him too; he was horrified to see the most beautiful, the most queenly, the most refined, fall into the arms of the coarse charmer who cared for only one thing. Well — it is a very curious type, this woman-taker; he made a real profession of it, and it had to be so, there was no gainsaying it; prayers, threats, physical struggles — and he got himself forgiven for it... It seems he had a situation that required people to come to him.
[Written crosswise: A dentist, then.]
Julian thought my stories would be more entertaining — he believes me all the same. He is a little surprised by my ideas... holy ones; so am I, but I am like that. Sentimental... or else perhaps quite ordinary; it seems to me I shall become very materialistic if I do not find the dreamed ideal. Is it possible that one must fatally get stuck in the rut?... for in the end, as they say, that is life. What do you know of life? seems to me words without sense — yet they must mean something; and truly I know nothing of life.
Well then — and love? The love of Cassagnac? Of Cassagnac morally deflated and withered? Héloïse says that "wealth and greatness do not make the charm of love; true tenderness must strip from the lover everything that is not himself, and set aside his fortune, his rank, his offices, to consider him alone." Passable, I grant — but his qualities of heart and mind?
If instead of pure, loyal, elevated, delicate, I find him ordinary — and go on being fascinated — by what? Why, in my bedtime stories, can I find no other hero, and for more than three years? Then it is he, after all? Julian affirms it; I doubt it. He asked whether I take pleasure in seeing him. Indeed. Always? Always. — And besides, does one change? If one changes, it was false from the start.
Well — but none of that prevents me from seeing the realities of life. Whatever I may think, I must get out of my hole; I must have a position in the world. Once married, everything is finished — I shall be respectable, and no more Cassagnac... Besides, he does not think of me, has never thought of me, and would be quite astonished if he knew all that I write about him... in my solitude.

Notes

"Entirely to Cassagnac": Julian believed Marie had fallen completely and physically for Paul de Cassagnac (1842–1904), Bonapartist journalist and politician whom Marie had followed obsessively since the early carnets. He had recently married. ↩
"Documents": Marie uses Zola's naturalist vocabulary — treating family portraits as scientific specimens to study heredity and origins. ↩
L'Assommoir (1877): Zola's seventh Rougon-Macquart novel, depicting working-class life in Paris with brutal realism. Marie's response — moral outrage followed by resigned acceptance of her own powerlessness — is characteristic. ↩
Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835): novel by Théophile Gautier (1811–1872). The hero d'Albert falls in love with the androgynous Maupin, but when Rosette becomes his mistress, he cannot believe it is real. Marie uses this to describe her own dissociation from her feelings. ↩
Court breeches (culotte de cour): the formal dress worn at imperial court receptions under Napoleon III — knee breeches, silk stockings, frock coat; long obsolete by 1881 but lodged in Marie's imagination from when she first knew Cassagnac in the empire's final years. ↩
Héloïse (c. 1090–1164): medieval scholar and abbess, famous for her correspondence with Abelard. The quoted passage paraphrases her famous letter asserting that true love requires no conditions. Marie applies it to her own situation with Cassagnac. ↩