Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 4 May 1881

La Bailleul is posing! I am painting her portrait. She asked so insistently that it had to be done. But it is quite tiresome. I went to the Salon before ten o'clock, and at ten she arrived to sit.

La Bailleul pose ! Je fais son portrait. Elle l'a tellement demandé qu'il l'a fallu. Mais c'est bien embêtant. J'ai été au Salon avant dix heures, et à dix heures elle est arrivée poser.

[Words blacked out: I went to pay Julian and showed him] my photographs in costume. This Jew1 pays for the removal of the partition and claims nothing from me for the punctured canvas. I do not know what to do.

[Mots noircis: J'ai été payer Julian et lui ai montrer] mes photographies en costume. Ce juif paye la démolition de la cloison et ne me réclame rien pour le tableau crevé. Je ne sais que faire.

After a drive in the Bois we bring the Princess home to dinner; Alexis arrived in the evening. You know that Julian, having seen him following me at the Salon, imagines there is something between us. It makes me laugh.

Après un tour au Bois nous amenons la princesse dîner à la maison, Alexis est arrivé le soir. Vous savez Julian l'ayant vu me suivre au Salon s'imagine qu'il y a quelque chose. Ça me fait rire.

Notes

Marie uses an antisemitic epithet here in a characteristically contradictory way — the "Jewish" quality she means is supposed to be a shrewd, calculating businessness, yet the very next clause praises Julian's unexpected generosity. The casual antisemitism is a feature of her period and milieu, not endorsed. ↩