Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 9 February 1881

Mme de Brimont.
Here is an article by Popaul summarising a current affair — the Dugué case — and which moreover offers explanations of the said Popaul's politics. Very worked up after my conversation with Julian, I am now much cooled down and no longer in a hurry to re-read my impressions to take stock...
Besides, I am absolutely absorbed by the picture. I am wearing out my youth in work — and why?

Thursday, 10 February 1881

Here is a letter from Nadine and one from Maman [missing] — which my editors will be kind enough to translate. Here is my reply to Maman:
"Being the voluntary or involuntary cause of all my sorrows — for it is your fault that I have spent, and still spend, my youth shut up, seeing no one but Mouzays or old Gavinis or other species of that kind.
Being thus the cause of my moral death, you ought at least not to inflict on me the bore of my physical one.
Unfortunately I am very well and no doubt have long yet to drag on between the old maids of the atelier and my aunt and Mlle Oelsnitz.
Instead of responding to the rumour of my imaginary illness with wild grimaces, you ought to think of serious things — above all, to think that I have quite enough vexations on earth without having added to them the vexation of being told I am dying, and other stupidities that enrage me. You are absolutely determined then that something be invented? Perhaps it already has been, by apprentice veterinarians like that savage Trebinsky. Before, the pretext for dramas was Georges; now it is me.
Instead of speaking to me of your love, remember that you and your Georges have morally murdered me. I have had enough of these tragedies.
I repeat: I am well, and I am sorry for it. But since I am not dying of illness, I shall find something else when I have finally lost all hope of escaping the atrocious and abominable life you impose on me.
Marie.
There is nothing to be proud of. This letter in reply to Maman's is very harsh — but it expresses exactly the feelings that all these people and all these events provoke in me.

Notes

"Popaul": Marie's mocking nickname for Paul de Cassagnac (from "Paul" — the diminutive "Popaul" was a common comic name). He was editor of Le Pays and later L'Autorité, Bonapartist newspapers. The "Dugué affair" has not been identified precisely. ↩