Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 27 September 1883

Paul has left this evening with… my full powers of attorney.
He has sworn on his children's heads not to cheat.
Madame Faleyeff has come with her daughter, who is to marry Salms, the son of the celebrated Rattazzi.
The Faleyeffs are provincial petty nobles, very unsophisticated; the girl is pretty and had a horrendously resounding scandal with an attaché at the Russian consulate who showed her letters to everyone — infamous letters, in short the last word in horrors. Salms is either very much in love or very deeply in debt, for he is marrying her all the same.
He has a fortune, they say, left by the Marquis de Pommeren, of whom he is the son and who enriched his mother, the Rattazzi. He is not even a count, although he puts it on his cards. The Salms family has, they say, forbidden him to carry this title, his mother's husband being plain M. Salms, no more… And what does all this matter to me! They say. So they say. In short, I am only repeating what everyone says aloud.