Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Friday, 5 January 1883

Gavini has us admitted through the privileged doors. I could feel myself growing pale already in the courtyard — the men with preoccupied faces, the wreaths, the reddened eyes — and finally the imposing, grandiose catafalque, and that hall entirely draped in black, made small by the number of wreaths and the avalanches of flowers. The lights after the sunlight; the coffin up high beneath the canopy between the four black columns wrapped in tricolour flags...

Gavini nous fait entrer par les portes privilegiees. Je me sentais palir deja dans la cour, les hommes affaires, les couronnes, les yeux rougis et enfin l'imposant, le grandiose catafalque et cette salle toute drapee de noir rendue petite par le nombre des couronnes et les avalanches de fleurs. Les lumieres apres le soleil, le cercueil tout en haut sous le dais entre les quatre colonnes noires enroulees de drapeaux tricolores...

I began to weep at the moment Maman brought Hecht1 to me — the enemy, who was also weeping, [words blacked out: while pressing my hands] and repeating: "Oh! thank you, thank you!"

Je me suis mise a pleurer au moment ou maman m'amenait Hecht, l'ennemi qui pleurait aussi i[Mots noircis: en me serrant les mains] et repetant: Oh ! merci, merci !

I made a gesture, smiling, to excuse myself for weeping, and he came back several times; and at the door — where, cooled down already, I wanted to pass without looking at him — he pressed both my hands again with his tearful: "thank you, thank you." In any case the great man has brought me back to the realities of life — as has poor Gavini, who had taken Hecht for Bastien-Lepage and had overwhelmed him with attentions.

Je fis un geste en souriant pour m'excuser de pleurer et il est revenu a plusieurs reprises et a la porte ou deja refroidie je voulus passer sans le regarder il me ressera les deux mains avec son larmoyant: merci, merci. Enfin le grand m'a rendu aux realites de la vie ainsi que ce pauvre Gavini qui lui avait pris Hecht pour Bastien-Lepage et qui l'avait comble de graces.

Notes

Hecht: probably Albert Hecht, a Republican sympathiser of modest literary connections. He interprets Marie's tears as political solidarity — and she does not disillusion him. The comedy of Gavini mistaking him for the celebrated painter Bastien-Lepage is characteristic of the social confusions that attended great public occasions. ↩