Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 26 March 1882

A man has killed himself not far from the villa, in the trees; we went to look, like street urchins... Besides, in this charming Mise-Brun the most hooligan manners prevail — people go so far as to hang onto passing carts — and as Bojidar is a very good sport and funny, it is like a return to the fine days of the three graces. Oh, Nice. Only the holy studio joke has mixed in this time, and we laugh from morning to night. So, on the subject of cheerful things: the poor man shot himself in the middle of the forehead with a pistol. A horrible black hole and the blood that had flowed into every crease of the yellow, shaven, rigid face; the mouth open and only two teeth. While waiting for the doctor and the commissioner to arrive I sent Bojidar for my palette and made a quick sketch of it — under those beautiful trees, stretched out in the green grass, in that beautiful sunshine.
Besides, in Nice everything seems simple. A crowd of urchins were playing nearby, shoving one another toward the body. Bojidar, Rosalie, and I posed before the curious onlookers and the police, making Parisian jokes at the dead man's expense. It is sinister, but this body stretched out like that inspired nothing more; yet this evening I cannot look at the quick sketch without horror. A corpse does not frighten me but gives me the impression of something awfully dirty and repugnant. A beloved being become an ignoble piece of flesh on its way to becoming filth would make me weep with rage and shame.
The doctor and the commissioner arrived; this ex-man was searched. Nothing but a note worded thus: I come to this fatal extremity on account of a family matter. No money; a pair of socks in his pocket — socks knitted at home. He must have been a petit-bourgeois. He killed himself with a poor, cheap pistol. Two bullets wrapped in paper were found in one of his pockets.
I was coming back with my painting just as Savine and Barnola arrived for lunch. Barnola brought his friend Villa, who sings admirably. I sounded out Barnola for Dina — she has only to say yes. And then... I feel almost guilty at pushing her toward it. Barnola is forty-three; he has the air of an aged coquette; he squeezes his feet into tight shoes; he has rheumatism; besides, things have been said about him and his... aunt — as about Pomar and Lady Caithness. I know very well that Dina has not enough of a dowry to be too demanding, but... all the same, at the moment of saying yes I hesitate as if it were for myself... On one hand I tell myself she is twenty-six, she has not 200,000 francs; she is not of extraordinary beauty; love matches are rare... But on the other hand — this sister who grew up with me, to hand her coldly over to this gentleman who... ugh!
There is in it, you see, a point... naturalistic as the death of that corpse; this beautiful creature, a little too fat, who laughs with me and with whom I talk of everything, of our common aspirations...
Ah, how dreadful it is to think of a marriage without love and without the millions that would be there to answer at every moment the heart's objections. I sometimes imagine myself married to such-and-such — and look, when it is Gabriel Géry, who pleases me, well, I still always have to add that he has inherited five million francs a year; without that I do not allow myself to love him. There is only the other... and even then I often find it necessary to admit that the Empire will have been restored by that time.
Étincelle mentions me in the account of the Colbert afternoon and uses the images from my letter — but the great panegyric is for the young Troubetzkoy, whose marriage to Pomar has come to nothing. The Troubetzkoys have left, and Étincelle is puffing up the girl to react against the complicated gossip story according to which Princess Lise had her dresses seized for debt.
It seems she told Pomar that her daughter adored him and that he would have her unhappiness on his conscience — and it is Pomar himself who tells it. That is a very ungentlemanly thing to repeat, even if it were true. In any case, this... son of Lady Caithness is quite hard to catch — I do not know how many young women have broken their teeth trying to bite.