Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 24 January 1883

After a crushing day of painting, we go to Etincelle's — she wrote me an adorable letter to thank us for the flowers we sent after her article — where there is M. Bocher, the business agent of the Orléans family, and two others, among them a tall, well-built man, almost a Cassagnac, spoiled by a pince-nez.
I listened in silence for twenty-five minutes while they said dreadful things about the Revolution, the crimes of France since '86... etc.
It would have been too easy to reply, especially since I fall asleep each evening only after two chapters of Michelet's Revolution. When the old Bocher leaves, I commit the probable mistake of saying that I have abominable opinions.
— What, republican ones?
How is one to declare oneself republican in this pure Louis XVI salon, with Etincelle enthroned on a white lacquered armchair in a royal-blue velvet gown with panniers? With her face [cancelled words: illegible] but droll and charming even though [cancelled words: truly well], this woman is very agreeable. I get out of it by saying that the motives, the intentions, the faith... were admirable, that it was a generous plan... etc... In short... That all parties have committed crimes... without having the excuse of everyone's happiness in prospect... that it is natural that in the early stages one gropes, one makes mistakes, sometimes cruelly...
In short, timidly but in fairly precise terms, a modest apologia for the Revolution. Leaning on the sentimental side — and in the end Etincelle consoles Maman by telling her that what is generous and heroic in all this was bound to find an echo in my young heart, etc. etc.
Meanwhile the pince-nez gentleman remained, launching from time to time a word, a phrase in the Cassagnac style, and as we were leaving, he said how much he regretted not having been able to come to our evening (he had been invited by Saint-Amand) — an exchange of lively courtesies with Maman and a fine speech to me, with whom he is honoured, flattered, and delighted to have made acquaintance. I reply with a nod... Child, don't touch.
It is the Baron Dauble who, as you have just seen, is handsome — save for the pince-nez — intelligent, agreeable... In short, he is not one of those men one sees by the thousand, but someone — and 400,000 francs a year. I hoped he would leave first, so I could ask who he was. For I have met him a hundred times, everywhere, and always said to myself that this must be a literary man or a politician, and that his pince-nez spoils him. And it is Dauble — the quasi-husband of Etincelle. [Crossed-out words: In the end he offered] they tried to divorce, to have the marriage annulled so as to marry, but de Peyronney will not hear of it. [One and a half lines blacked out and cancelled] — the chance. This ménage makes me think of d'Arthez and the Princesse de Cadignan...
In any case, until now everything that even distantly recalls that great idiot Cassagnac pleases me... Yet after a speech by Gambetta I could no longer find traces of the Bonapartist in what I call my heart... He seemed small to me then, petty, absent, scattered; I could not even understand how I had thought I loved this gentleman when there existed on earth geniuses like Gambetta, or others more celebrated, stronger than Cassagnac.
A truly great man — while this poor Acard...
Yes, that is what will always prevent me from loving him — and I shall always prefer an illustrious man I have never spoken to and who may perhaps be ugly, ill, horrible...

Notes

Characters from Balzac's Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan (1839) — the reformed courtesan Diane de Maufrigneuse and the idealistic writer Daniel d'Arthez. ↩