Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 13 February 1881

Here is a letter from Maman, very tender [missing].

Monday, 14 February 1881

This morning Julian received the letter whose draft is here [missing], accompanied by an old red tulip. As we have often laughed together about Louise Michel, it has great effect.
The head of Brisbane (Alice) is painted in two hours, and Julian tells me to leave it. And other times one spends eight days producing something wretched... Part of the apron and the bodice are also painted.
The perspecteur [sic] comes and preaches at me for twenty-five minutes the necessity of submitting to his infallible rules. Tony then?... and I? This man cannot be wrong, since they are fixed rules — but Tony, but I?
I know nothing about it. Let us not go deeper, so as not to tire ourselves at the moment when we need great freedom of mind to quietly make the masterpiece. But I opt for the mathematician.

Tuesday, 15 February 1881

Thirty-two days until the Exhibition.
That mad princess is back from Nice and is at ours with her two children; she came yesterday too with Bojidar. They leave early and Alexis stays until we throw him out... in view of the atelier.
I like him well because he finds me "stunning" and so "well-curved" — truly too well-curved; God gave me too much of it, so I am unique. He also finds me pretty — I know this through indirect channels and from his conversation.
It adds spice to our conversations.

Notes

Louise Michel (1830–1905): French anarchist and feminist revolutionary, "the Red Virgin of Montmartre," prominent in the Paris Commune (1871). By 1881 she was a celebrity of the radical left. Marie and Julian apparently joked about her dramatic persona — hence the red tulip sent with the letter as a knowing reference. ↩
The Salon of 1881 opened in May; Marie is counting down the 32 days remaining to submit her entry. ↩
Galbeuse: Marie's invented or half-heard word from galbe (curve, contour); used admiringly of a shapely figure. She treats it with ironic pride. ↩