Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Saturday, 20 May 1882

Yesterday evening Soutzo, having requested an audience, was received. He says he is not even offended by all these horrors — so utterly implausible are they — he who has, it appears, always taken our side. It seems, moreover, that Mme Cartwright spoke ill of me, "dreadful things," Soutzo says. This was when Breslau and her set had told her I was unwilling to make her acquaintance.
These kitchen gossips had been carrying back to Cartwright's all the careless remarks I made — and Schaeppi showed a sketch she made one day when I undressed in front of her, in a great hurry and needing to speak with her.
All of this must constitute the horrors Soutzo speaks of — I did not ask for details. Poor Cartwright makes amends by singing my praises everywhere. But what troubles me is that she is genuinely a woman one cannot associate with... That is to say, Maman can — but a young woman already as much attacked as I am compromises herself...
Ah! I am discouraged... You who know my life — where are the horrors?
What do I do? Since coming to Paris, I am not even eccentric any more... Italy — and what did I do in Italy?
I kissed that wretched Antonelli in secret. Well — and what of it?
[Blackened words: To me] it is repugnant — but quite a number of young women have done and do the same, and no one says dreadful things about them. I assure you that when fragments reach me of what is said about us, about me, I am stupefied — it is so senseless. The misfortune is that without powerful connections and without a colossal fortune we are very elegant people, very conspicuous, and people occupy themselves greatly with us. And since they do not know the truth, they invent — each in their own way. The lawsuit was disastrous; now it is over, but then it is something else...
It is I who am attacked... And when, quite calmly and alone in my room among my books after eight or ten hours of work, I think about what may be said of me — that I am morally ripped from that sepulchral setting, undressed, commented upon, disfigured; that I am credited with thoughts, with actions... They give me twenty-seven years and impute to me an offending independence... that I have never had... Well — one is left helpless, and one wants to weep.
Saint-Amand came to lunch and behaved like a madman. He is well known as a bit touched — his father was mad, and he is heading in the same direction. But little Brisbane was there, and I did not know where to put myself in the face of this idiot's extravagances.
He seized hands, kissed them, grabbed the little one's hands, sat down beside her — when Maman entered he ran to embrace her... This goes beyond all limits. I know perfectly well it costs him nothing to kneel in the middle of the drawing-room or to slap someone on the shoulder, and that he does it to respectable women — but I cannot endure it, perhaps more sensitive than others, as people who are much attacked tend to be.
He made me stupid for the whole day.
Mme Gavini, Mme Randouin, Mme Jide, her mother; la Bailleul, Goldsmid, de la Tour, des Perrières, Kiki, Mme de la Lande, Mlle de Caradori, young de Rokas, M. de Dalmas... Villevielle. I think that is all. Mme Étincelle has not yet come. And what astonishes me is that Gabriel has not come — he has been in Paris for eight days.
Yesterday we went to the Salon with Gavini, Bastien's brother, and Beaumetz.
Bastien is going to paint a picture representing a little peasant boy looking at a rainbow. It will be sublime — take my word for it. What talent, what talent, what talent!