Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Thursday, 5 June 1884

Prater is dead. He grew up with me — they bought him for me in Vienna in 1870, he was three weeks old and always burrowed behind the trunks, among the paper wrappings of our purchases.
He was my devoted and faithful dog — weeping when I went out, waiting for hours sitting at the window. Then in Rome I became infatuated with another dog, and Prater was taken in by Maman. Always very jealous of me, with his lion-yellow coat and his magnificent eyes. When I think of my want of heart!... The new dog was called Pincio, and he was stolen from me six years ago. Instead of returning to Prater, who was inconsolable, I was stupid enough to get Coco I, then the current Coco... It is cowardly; it is ignoble. For four years these two beasts have been at each other's throats, and in the end Prater was shut up in a room upstairs where he lived like a prisoner, while Coco paraded on the table and on people's heads. He died of old age — since yesterday I have spent hours with him; he would drag himself towards me and lay his head on my knees.
Ah! I am a fine wretch with my tender feelings. Oh! despicable character — I weep as I write, and I think that the traces of these tears will earn me a reputation for good-heartedness among those who read. I always meant to take the poor beast back, and it always came down to a piece of sugar and a caress in passing. You should have seen his tail then — that poor docked tail wagging and wagging, making almost a circle it turned so fast...
He is not dead yet, the poor creature — I believed so because I no longer saw him in his room; he had burrowed behind a trunk, or a bath-tub, as he used to do in Vienna, and I thought they had taken him away without daring to tell me.
But it will be tonight or tomorrow...
Tony found me weeping — I had written to him to ask something about reproductions of the painting, and he came in person. It seems I failed to sign a small document by which others could have been prevented from reproducing my painting and I could have been sued. You will understand that I am very proud of all these requests for authorisations — and I should be proud even of a lawsuit.
I am very fond of Tony — he is limited, but I am very fond of him. It is not exactly that he is limited, but he is 1830. Well, I don't quite know what.
My dress for the embassy is being made at home — I am making it almost myself to be sure it will be right.
Never mind — Tony may be 1830, but he has very noble feelings; not like Julian, who believes every piece of gossip.
That I should have reproached anyone for material kindnesses!
Ah! Fie, the horror! And besides, Tony understands me well — on the question of marriage, he says first that he cannot see me in it, and then that it would only be possible with an extraordinarily superior man, and that it would be more of a partnership.
— The ideal, then, I said to him — well, sir, I have dismissed that as impossible. It is too fine a thing to happen. All that remains is the mannequin-husband.
[Crossed out: Saint-Amand?] For the superior man... I am endowed with a mind so... let us say so perverse that [Words blacked out: to say whether there is a] the tiniest black point in a splendour, in a sun — I shall see only that tiny black point... No, says Tony, all that remains is the arrow of the mischievous god.
— Ah! I ask for nothing better.
He died that evening.