Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 12 March 1882

I come in for lunch and find Étienne and my aunt in tears. Georges is dead.
This was what was almost wished for by everyone he had martyrised — making himself so unhappy — yet the effect is no less horrible for that.
Maman and my aunt were crying out about martyrdom and accusing themselves [Blacked out: almost of his death], forgetting that he had made life so painful for us all. For that matter I myself was so shaken by this miserable death in an attic under a false name that all the things said in moments of exasperation came back to me like crimes.
For an hour I almost reproached myself for what I had done to prevent him from staying openly with us with a street woman... You know all that I know — and now Rosalie has just confessed to me that I know only a hundredth part of what these ladies suffered, so carefully was it hidden from me. You remember how loudly I used to insist that he should not come back and that we should have nothing more to do with his sordid affairs... Yet despite all that Maman always went to retrieve him from the most dreadful places. But everything is effaced before death...
Ah, what a horrible thing it is to reproach oneself for any harshness toward a dead person!... I must recall everything he put us through to excuse myself for not having, like Maman, protected his infamies... And yet I come to telling myself that he was only mad, ill, but kind, loving, and unhappy... I see him under the carriage gate... It seems he wept when told I was very ill... And so unhappy all his life, having everything needed to be one of the fortunate of this world. He wrecked his life over trifles, dragged the whole family through the mud; receiving a large fortune from his father and letting himself be robbed and plundered for fear of returning to Russia, for fear of facing the criminal court — having never committed anything worse than minor disgraces, yet always hiding like a criminal... One must hope something will come back to Dina; he cannot have consumed everything, far from it — though we receive desperate appeals for money every day and kept sending it to him. Despite all this Maman cries that he died of hunger perhaps — the family's tendency toward exaggeration — [Crossed out: Oh how sad all this is]. But poor Dina... You know that Georges married a widow older than himself, and that Étienne married the daughter of this widow, which is not permitted in Russia; there was a long lawsuit, and as Étienne was the more active party, it was Georges's marriage — prior to Étienne's by ten years — that was annulled. Such are the things that can happen in Russia.
There were three children: Dina, Lola, and a brother aged sixteen — a brilliant pupil promising to reach the highest destinies — when he learned he had no legal name. [Blacked out: Nameless in] Russia is quite another and more dreadful thing than here. He killed himself.
You remember that dreadful thing, seven years ago.
So the marriage being void, the children do not inherit unless the brothers renounce in their favour — but dear Alexandre is there... Ah, how sad all this is. And I, who still complain, when beside me poor Dina is so unhappy — to say nothing of the fortune itself.