Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Tuesday, 16 January 1883

Little Bastien takes us to Ville-d'Avray, to the house of Gambetta, where his brother is working.

Le petit Bastien nous mene a Ville d'Avray dans la maison de Gambetta ou son frere travaille.

[Blacked-out words: Until one has] seen it with one's own eyes, one cannot believe in an interior so wretched — for "modest" would poorly describe what it is.

[Mots noircis: Tant qu'on] n'a pas vu de ses yeux on ne croit pas a un interieur aussi miserable...

The kitchen alone is decent in this sort of gardener's cottage.

La cuisine seule est convenable dans cette espece de maison de jardinier.

The dining room is so small and so low that one wonders how the coffin fitted in it and how his famous friends could have gathered around it.

La salle a manger est si petite et si basse qu'on se demande comment le cercueil y a tenu...

The drawing room is larger but bare and devoid of all comfort. A poor staircase leads to the bedroom, which fills me with astonishment and indignation. What! It is in this miserable cage — the ceiling of which I can touch with my hand, literally — that a sick man of Gambetta's constitution was left for six weeks, in winter with the windows shut. A large, asthmatic man — a wounded man! He died of that room too.

Le salon est un plus grand mais pauvre et denue de tout confort...

Cheap two-penny wallpaper, a black bedstead, two writing-desks, mirrors patched between the windows, and curtains of old, wretched red wool. A poor student would not be housed any worse.

Un mechant papier de deux sous, un lit noir, deux secretaires...

This man who was so mourned was never loved! Surrounded by Jews, shareholders, speculators, exploiters — there was no one who loved him for himself, or even for his glory. But one should not have left him an hour in this unhealthy and miserable box! What! Could the dangers of a journey of an hour's length possibly compare with the danger of remaining without air in this horrible little room! But on a mattress, carried by hand, he could have been transported without the slightest jolt! Ville-d'Avray — the Jardies — which the newspapers depicted to us as a little house à la Barras!fn1 This man whom they said was so preoccupied with his comforts and his luxury! But it is an infamy! A house where he spent three days a week — and on such a footing!

Cet homme qu'on a tant pleure n'a jamais ete aime !

I can still understand that he himself was not particularly troubled by it — but his friends and his women! If there had been a single woman who loved him, she would not have left him surrounded by such vulgar, such ignoble objects.

Je comprends encore que lui ne s'en soit pas autrement preoccupe...

And these famous friends! But they lived off him — [blacked-out words: and that is] all.

Et ces fameux amis ! Mais ils vivaient de lui [Mots noircis: et voila] tout.

Mme Arnaud is represented by a little silver saucepan; there is also an armchair with L.G. on it, in poor taste and shoddy. All of this is extraordinary! Ah! If it had been me — he would be alive. Bastien is working at the foot of the bed like this — here is the plan.fn2

Mme Arnaud est representee par une petite casserole en argent...

[Diagram of room layout in original diary]

![](file:///C:/Users/kerra/OneDrive/Documents/bashkirtseff/Tome15_files/Tome15-5.png)

Nothing has been touched — the crumpled sheets on the eiderdown that represent the body, the flowers on the sheets. In the engravings one cannot grasp the proportions of the room, in which the bed takes up an enormous space. The distance between the bed and the window allows no stepping back at all, which is why the bed is cut off in the painting — one cannot see its foot. This painting is truth itself.

On n'a touche a rien, les draps froisses sur l'edredon qui figure le corps, les fleurs sur les draps.

The head thrown back is seen in three-quarter view, with that expression of nothingness after suffering, of a serenity still living, and already of the beyond. One believes one sees him in reality. This body stretched out, spread, annihilated, just departed by life — it is gripping.

La tete rejetee en arriere est vue de trois quarts...

It is an emotion that seizes you in the legs and breaks your back.

C'est une emotion qui vous prend aux jambes et qui casse les reins.

Bastien is a very fortunate man. I am a little ill at ease in his presence after this newspaper foolishness. Though he has the physique of a man of twenty-five, he has that benevolent, unaffected serenity that one sees in great men — Victor Hugo, for example.

Bastien est un homme bien heureux.

I shall end up finding him beautiful in any case — he possesses that infinite charm of people who are a force, a talent, and who know it without conceit and without foolishness. I watch him work while he talks with Dina and the others are in the next room.

Je finirai pas le trouver beau dans tous les cas...

On the wall one can see the bullet hole that killed Gambetta — he shows it to us, and then the calm of this room, the faded flowers, the sunlight through the window — all of it makes me weep... Only he has his back turned, absorbed in his painting, and so, not to lose the benefit of this feeling, I thrust my hand at him abruptly and go out quickly, my face covered in tears.

Sur le mur on voit le trou de la balle qui a tue Gambetta...

I hope he will have noticed. It is silly... Yes, silly to admit that one is always thinking about the effect.

J'espere qu'il l'aura remarque. C'est bete...

Afterward we go to the Marquise de Villeneuve's, where we make the acquaintance of her mother, Princess Pierre — a former laundress, they say, but a very fine woman with magnificent hands.

Et apres nous allons chez la marquise de Villeneuve...

This newspaper and Bastien incident vexes me... It is a nagging preoccupation!!

Cet incident de journal et de Bastien me chiffonne...

Tears for Gambetta are refreshing — but this is wretched, it is tiresome, it nags at one; one feels ashamed.

Des larmes pour Gambetta raffraichissent, mais ca c'est miserable, c'est embetant, cela tracasse...

We seem to be passing off the brother for the real one — it is ridiculous, it is odious... And above all, above all, it will turn the brother away from us; he is very good, very excellent, etc., but I would rather see the real one, the great one, the only one.

Nous avons l'air de faire passer le frere pour le vrai, c'est ridicule, c'est odieux...

He is the Gambetta of painting — he distinguishes himself from other talents as a master already dead; it is genius.

C'est le Gambetta de la peinture, il se distingue des autres talents comme un maitre deja mort, c'est du genie.

Notes

Paul Barras (1755–1829), corrupt and extravagant member of the Directory government. Marie implies the newspapers falsely portrayed Gambetta as living in similar luxury. ↩
Marie sketches a diagram of the room in the original diary. ↩