Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 19 November 1882

A visit from Saint-Amand,1 who is quite beside himself at seeing us again and is full of a thousand schemes for the new Hôtel Rambouillet2 of the rue Ampère. The greatest artists, the aristocracy, the world of letters! On the inaugural evening, an unperformed play by a young author will be staged, and it will establish our place in the literary world... In short, a thousand follies... It will be the only thing that matters...

Visite de Saint Amand qui est tout exalté de nous revoir et fait mille projets sur le nouvel hôtel Rambouillet de la rue Ampère. Les plus grands artistes, l'aristocratie, les lettres ! Le soir de l'inauguration, on jouera une pièce inédite d'un jeune auteur et cela nous posera dans le monde littéraire... Enfin mille folies... Il n'y aura plus que cela...

Notes

Saint-Amand: a friend and social acquaintance of the Bashkirtseff family, evidently a figure on the fringes of the Parisian artistic and literary world. He appears intermittently in the diary as someone given to ambitious, impractical plans. ↩
The Hôtel Rambouillet: the famous 17th-century Parisian salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet (1588–1665), a model of literary and aristocratic social gathering. To invoke it as a precedent was the highest aspiration for any Parisian salon-keeper. ↩