Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 11 March 1883

This evening my father has left! What luck. With his sister and with Paul. Those people are nasty people — or close enough.
Do you know that they took first class for themselves and second class for Paul? What do you say to that? That is revealing.
Besides, this gentleman's conduct here has been extraordinary. As for Paul — he is a decent fellow whom his wife makes very unhappy. But this gentleman my father... He has conducted himself like a heavy-handed benefactor, and if there is anyone who cannot play the role of benefactor, it is certainly he. Fortune and health destroyed, an insufferable character — and then suddenly finding an attentive, amiable, gracious family around him... For every attention was lavished upon him. And when he saw all that, he told himself he could ride roughshod over everyone.
That is to say — no! There are things in this life! Until now he had never seen proper respectable society, an elegant drawing room. It was we who... introduced him to the people we know here. Until Paris he had contented himself with the three drunkards and six bourgeois women of Poltava... And he is the one who lays down the law!... He has squandered more than a million and has not managed to form connections anywhere except that ignoble Poltava and...
And when he saw here that one could not shout at me, there were mad rages to which I responded with the most magnificent contempt. Besides, from the day he raised his voice against me and was coarse, everything is over. I went back to his room thinking he was dying — but all is quite over. He has done nothing to make himself loved or respected, either morally or materially. Nothing. And I should have submitted to this gentleman's insolences.
Never. And so I am just as glad he is gone.