Sunday, 1 July 1883

So then... This morning I go to the Luxembourg museum and carry away only two impressions: Cazin's Hagar and Ishmael and Saint-Marceaux's Genius Guarding the Secret of the Tomb. In the evening at dinner: the Engelhardts, the priest, Tchoumakoff, Bojidar — who stayed all day. Villevieille during the day. I am very puffed up with my own merits — I sing my own praises, adore myself, admire myself (only in front of Dina and Bojidar) and am happy. You cannot imagine — it is an intoxication... I feel my own strength... I worked a little on the Holy Women... It will be beautiful, beautiful... What else? Gabriel writes me a letter of condolence — that distinguished diplomat. And then? And then that is all, and my literary scribblings. Oh! They are flourishing — I am not actually writing anything yet; I am keeping an account of things that pile up alongside other things in my memory and on loose sheets of paper... And when I have accumulated enough material I shall try to... My novel is there; I have not torn it up; we shall see... it is madness — I believe myself capable of everything. I love myself. *Monday, 2 July 1883 Tuesday, 3 July 1883 The picture is going badly. I am in despair. Nothing is any comfort! The Engelhardts, Agathe, Bojidar — and what heat! On Friday I shall go to the Canroberts' — the Maréchale came this afternoon to persuade me. How kind those people are! At last here is the article in the Novoye Vremya*. It is very well done and embarrasses me slightly, because it states that I am only nineteen, when I am considerably older and people in fact take me for even older than I am. But the effect in Russia will be very great. Let us not forget that this morning we went to accompany old Tchoumakoff in search of a certain M. Carriès, a sculptor announced as the coming man of genius — an artist of the sixteenth century, savage, primitive, disenchanted, very young and unknown, all the poetry in the world... Naturally we rushed over — Rue Boissonnade, behind Montparnasse, in the middle of nowhere. Perfect. He exhibited twenty-four (!) busts in a Club — this series was called the Desolate Ones (!). It smacks of Rollinat... Tchoumakoff was mad about them; I had not seen them. A man who exhibits twenty-four heads and calls them the Desolate Ones, and who has a fine newspaper article about him — is neither an innocent nor a savage. In any case, we go in — I all ready to encourage this young... He does not give us the chance, and immediately begins to speak of himself with the liveliest admiration... It is abominable to lack modesty to such a degree — I was both embarrassed and amused... He took us for society women, and went on and on and on! A very original talent, even a fantastical one — and one that wearies. He sells busts at a hundred francs; I buy two. He knows Bastien and Gervex, and does not look like a man who will remain long at the roadside — I can already see him in the neighbourhood of the Parc Monceau. Not unattractive, twenty-six or twenty-seven years old. He strikes me as Jewish. He does not like Saint-Marceaux — the imbecile. Certainly it is a very original talent... And he wants it to be known... But what self-importance! Bastien is nothing but a bunch of violets beside him — as for Saint-Marceaux, who is genuinely very modest, there is no comparison. Is it possible to be so full of oneself?