Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 16 February 1882

It seems that old Julian wrote but I had not given him the address and the letter is lost. First day of Carnival... Our carriage is the prettiest except one that seemed better to me. We have a carriage draped in mauve sateen and [Crossed out: we have] Watteau dominoes of white wool with mauve pleats and a profusion of Parma violets and ribbons flying in the wind.
But what a difference from Italian Carnivals! Here it is a procession of a crowd of poor local associations who have formed floats and cavalcades to win a prize, with the people throwing confetti and foreigners watching from their balconies. There are no young men, no bonbonnières, no bouquets, no intrigues begun.
This floating, cosmopolitan population cannot give any idea of a Carnival in Italy, where the aristocracy mingles in, and artists — like last year, the float of the Villa Medici in Rome...
Nice is pretty, picturesque, but it has... or rather it has not... A bastard country, a country without character, a country I love nonetheless, but...
Perhaps if I spent the season in Nice the Carnival would have its charms... but no — these English and Dutch who come to intrigue, or the Parisians and others who go off to Monaco... In any case... I do not know — this Carnival is nothing but a procession of floats and riders with very little artistic merit.
La Linsingen and the Princesse Eristoff were with us. At five o'clock we go to the station to fetch my aunt and Bojidar, and we all dine together at the London House, where one feels quite at home, naturally. Papa and my aunt slip away to Monaco on the seven o'clock train. Bojidar's arrival brings a little life to the whole house.
And I am thinking of my painting and of that infamous journalist from Le Pays. Speaking of journalists — Limousin of La Vie Mondaine (the Nice Figaro) came in while we were dining; he was made to sit down, praised our float very warmly, and I shook his hand as a colleague — it seems I am a journalist.
Which is... for after all, if Cassagnac and I were to meet one day... It will probably be as it has already happened to me with other people — [Blacked out: in a way] to see them again in the dreamed-of circumstances and to see them coldly, they no longer interest you, and it is hardly until you return home or weeks later that you recall and say to yourself: look, I have seen again such-a-one who once occupied my every thought — [Crossed out: I saw him again] — one did not even think of it in seeing him again, of all the journeys he sent your imagination on... I am floundering. But here is a living example: the astonishing... but stupid Émile d'Audiffret — you remember, do you not? Well, I met him two years ago at Mme de Lesseps' and... absolutely nothing. Yet he certainly made my fifteen-year-old heart beat; I recognise it in glimmers. It is past, forgotten — but it was like that, the mad infatuation with the dreadful Larderei. As for that wretched Antonelli, I shall be eternally vexed at having pretended to love a boy I did not like, at having worked myself up (to prove I was not in love with brother Émile of the Miseri-et-Corde) — uselessly, stupidly... A being who never pleased me. One must believe that such stupidities exist in life, such inexplicable, foolish incoherences... I have had troubles everywhere and with everyone who has... amused me — but one keeps a sort of indulgent memory of them, tenderness for what might have been a weakness; whereas this little Roman... I learned later that he used to get tipsy in just that way — I saw him tipsy... Pfft. And so I, who used to fall asleep every evening thinking about how I would see Audiffret again... I saw him again like a host of others... But, you will say, it is not the same thing, since you claim, O sublime artist, that Cassagnac is the fatal man... Well, if I were mistaken, it would all have to begin again — he would still be waiting to be found... My laziness is opposed to that conjecture...