Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Wednesday, 30 January 1884

Almost nothing done — tried on dresses...
Claire and Villevieille.
The priest, the princess, and Gaillard to dinner. Gaillard and I discuss serious matters... The others listen; the priest occasionally joins the conversation... politics, Tonkin and Ferry; political questions with psychological dimensions... I do not know whether it is that Gaillard is stupid, but I seem to myself to have been very witty, producing long sentences with unexpected conclusions, in a very calm voice. The Radical husband of the Comtesse de Quincey takes me very seriously. It seems to astonish me that anyone should take me seriously... Insolent creature!
Thursday, 31 January 1884 Finished Jacques! And since his brother came to collect him — a baby of three years old — I make a sketch of him.
Oh! in twenty minutes, as befits a superior genius. Afterwards...
Bastien was born in November 1848. He is thirty-five.
He was already a painter in 1870 and could consequently have fled to England like the gentle Tony.
But he served in the campaign, and his brother too, though barely fifteen or sixteen years old.
But the brother has less merit — he was following an example. He is an... interesting man, Bastien... I think of him constantly, and the crystallisations form admirably.
Then dropped by Albert Wolff.
He hid behind the name Adolphe...
It is very fine to have fought — he must truly have a noble character... His brother says: if you knew him, if you knew what a heart he has — says he is extremely sensitive to the miseries and injustices of Paris, and stays in the country so as not to be overwhelmed by them.
And then — that was the last straw — He was dropped by la Mackay...
At Montmartre...
And as I exclaimed:
— What a lucky creature!
— He, the architect answered me, is the most unhappy fellow there is...
I did not ask why... but! Brave, sincere, illustrious.
When dropped by la Mackay He'd take himself off to the publican's To stand himself rounds of green absinthe At Montmartre — But apart from his never thinking of me, we could never love each other virtuously — there are insurmountable obstacles... When he died like an old rat —
I shall marry Saint-Amand well enough.
Only his brother wept for him — That is the only possible arrangement in the event that this illustrious, brave, unhappy, and sincere man should deign to ---
For Émile is a tender soul...
But if he were to deign to notice the author — the rival of Victor Hugo — he would be accused of wanting to feather his nest... I am rich... And I do not want the slightest shadow cast upon divine and celestial feelings... etc.
If he were to say to himself merely this: I adore her — and besides, she has a fortune, which is no bad thing. That alone would be horrible for me. And so I shall never marry for love... There is only Saint-Amand.
Rue Legendre! Because I dream of love — and not of living together always. However superior and angelic one may be, that must domesticate one's heart... And so when two guilty ones find extreme happiness in spending a fortnight together, it is like the pleasure of going in a hired cab when one is accustomed to a private carriage — but always, no.
I see it so clearly... I have lived it, so to speak... And it must be true.
Note that I have no pretension to speak generally or to propose rules of conduct — I speak for myself; and if what I want lies outside the common rules, so much the worse: it suits me, serves my purpose, and I am perfectly free to dream of a particular happiness... We would never bore each other with ordinary things, and we would see each other only to exchange what is finest, most elegant, most tender, and most witty in human nature.
It would be like hours of rest in a poor workman's day... In any case these are possible things... And what would be needed for it to be real? That I be loved. That is all.
We both have enormous talents and stand apart from the common run of humanity... It could be a beautiful existence... for two... But...
Since he had paid in flowers The paint-merchant refused him his colours.
One sees guilty lovers who are happy for twenty-five years... I would deceive no one.
Provided I do not die between twenty-eight and thirty. I tell you it goes badly.
He would have committed murders.
I love him then? At Montmartre

Notes

Tonkin: the French colonial campaign in northern Vietnam, then a highly contentious political issue. Jules Ferry (1832–1893), Prime Minister 1880–1881 and 1883–1885, was the chief architect of French colonial expansion. ↩
Tony Robert-Fleury (1837–1912): French academic painter who left France during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). ↩
Crystallisation: Stendhal's term in De l'Amour (1822) for the process by which the imagination clothes a beloved with imagined perfections, like a branch coated in crystals when left in a salt mine. ↩
Albert Wolff (1835–1891): powerful art critic for Le Figaro, known for championing or destroying careers with his reviews. ↩
The street in Paris's 17th arrondissement where Bastien-Lepage had his studio. ↩