Notes
Émile Bastien: brother of Jules Bastien-Lepage, who worked as an architect in Paris. He is the "architect" who appears throughout the diary — a gentle, straightforward young man of whom Marie is fond but does not take seriously as a suitor. ↩
The "real brother": Marie uses this to distinguish Jules Bastien-Lepage, the celebrated painter, from Émile the architect. The caricature she sent was of Colombières, the Bastien family village in the Meuse. ↩
Modeste Mignon (1844): one of Balzac's novels about a young provincial woman of great intelligence and romantic imagination who constructs an elaborate fantasy life through a secret correspondence with a famous poet. Marie's identification with her is characteristically precise. ↩