Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 14 October 1883

A busy day. Departure for Jouy at seven in the morning. Walks in the woods, touch-ups to the portrait of Louis, conversation, croquet, and so on. The Meudon woods are ravishing — that sun gilding them through the fog. Nature is beautiful.
I get home just in time to dress. There is a small dinner this evening.
The Gavinis, the Faleyeffs and their Salms, the Karageorgevitch mother, Saint-Amand.
It is not very gay, but I am entertained by my hair. Instead of being tousled, I have left the forehead frankly uncovered.
Among all those dressed foreheads, it is a charming novelty. The hair twisted up at the crown, puffing naturally, and that magnificent brow whose beauty and nobility I had never suspected — it transforms me entirely.
I become a figure of imposing candor; I feel as though I am pontificating, or descending from a throne. It lends the bearing a gentle meekness, an air of calm and strength… In short, it is no longer me. And that brow, always hidden until now, has a childlike purity — I look fifteen. Bastien would have loved me like that.
This evening, with no one worth speaking of there, I was radiant with freshness — and if I needed to be pretty… Yet experience tells me one is pretty when one wills it; the only thing is not to hurry oneself while dressing.
A great deal of calm, and the will to shine. That goes a long way.
I stupefy myself doing card readings to find out whether Basstyen…
And all evening the cards are favorable, and it seems to me that a sympathetic current is established between here and Damvillers. I am extraordinary.
And so these cards… Madame Gavini playing bézique with Salms, Gavini a piquet with the princess, the others amusing themselves as best they could — I went from group to group, and when I saw them occupied, I played patience. It is foolish, it is low… But when one is preoccupied one cannot escape it, and the cards increase, develop, create the very preoccupation.
Dirty beast of a painter — do you have any idea at least? Go on — there is nothing to be proud of. I need a name to grind in the vast mill that is my head; yours happens to be there at the moment, that is all — go along, you descendant… oblique, of Joan of Arc. Sleep in peace and paint your very green landscapes, and so may your cook of a younger brother.
Amen.
This evening's betrothed couple is not interesting — these two beings awaken nothing in anyone, and she will not be happy… yet for her sake I hope she is what they say, that is to say, a seed of Messalina that has already yielded a few blossoms… He will have deserved it, for he is a gambler; he knows everything and marries… without love.
May Madame Rattazzi bless them.