Diary of Marie Bashkirtseff
CZENUKFR

Sunday, 29 June 1884

To church. A grey alpaca gown, of course. Very chic. Saint-Amand lunches with us.
We sent Jules a Russian soup. Our cook is not strong on other things, but he makes soups like no one else. They are marvellous broths — especially the chicken broths, like the one sent, with the whole fowl inside as they do in Russia. I asked last evening at the Russian shop at the Madeleine whether there was any way of obtaining fresh caviar. But at this season...
Well — do you see me going myself into a shop.
I, who have my gloves bought for me and who only stir myself when a gown needs to be fitted.
Rosalie says he will repay me for it — next year he will be well and on the jury. Good Rosalie knows me well, and knows that I always have small calculations. But not this time. No — word of honour — it is entirely disinterested.
I am amused to be maternal and to think about soups — I, who hate concerning myself with such things.
It seems to me that I am condescending to come down, and that it is very noble.
If at least he were grateful for it. Only these ladies are so foolish — they will immediately imagine...
Because I go into a shop, or because I went to the kitchen to check on the soup myself. It is true that this is quite extraordinary for me — but it seems perfectly simple to me! As for these ladies, they plunge in headlong — I have only to express an opinion for them to exaggerate it; I have only to indicate a way of being for them to...
Yes — when it costs them nothing, when it amuses them. For Jules amuses them!... and if they see he amuses me too, there will be no other god. Everything will be for Jules. It is already like that. Provided he deigns to accept our homage.
Well...
...he was so delighted with the embroidered napkin! Nothing has given me as much pleasure, he said yesterday — nothing could have been kinder; I was far away, ill, and someone thought of me!
He called the jury asses!
For after all, they hung me badly!
Yes, they hung me badly! Near a door — in a place where the canvas could be torn at any moment. What! because I only sent a small painting!
A small painting — does one know what it is to paint a small painting like that one! I should like to see them try! Those who have done it know! And because my canvas is not "important" they hang it near a door! People who know that I am absent, that I am ailing... Every reason to be courteous, to be kind, to hang it with respect — yes, artists and friends would have done it, but these are asses! And asses never will! Ah! I have never said all there is to say about this.
It is to show you how much one should trouble oneself about the judgements of asses!
Ten of them know what they are about — and the rest!..
— But sir, I am not troubled about their medal... only it was not just — they gave one to...
At the word just he had a smile that taught me better than any speech that one must truly give up counting on justice.
What, really? He says one can find justice from three or four men — but never from forty.
The actor-self asks: What — must one then no longer believe in justice!
And the spectator-self replies: Come, dear self — do you really believe in it?
Well yes — I swear I do believe in it; but I see that I shall have to give it up.
Well! Rosalie, carrying the soup, saw the housemaid, who told her that Mme Mackay had sent yesterday a vegetable aspic!
— It is a house, she said, where Monsieur is much loved — as at yours.
I am not jealous — but it puts me off the soup. Ugh!
Well — I should like to know. They adore each other — very well. He is as sick as a dog and goes off to Algeria with his mother. The lady stays here, gives balls, furnishes her mansion and her stables.
I thought it was over. He returns and she is not constantly with him — besides... his mother. But they are friends: the aspic proves it. And the maid in the Bastien household has been placed there for a year by the Mackay servants. And when this virtuous person gives a ball, Jules's maid goes to help her servants. [Crossed out: All this is]
And when he stays six or seven months at Damvillers, she does not go then?.. Well, if it is not over, why is she not more with him? She really seems like a lady who fears to compromise herself. Come now — what does it mean?
I understand nothing of it.
Whether it is the Mackay or male friends matters little — at the point where they spoil him so... I am happy to be entirely kind, but not for people who will find nothing remarkable in it. I am as good to him as anyone. I have therefore no reason to be there. If he were abandoned, that would be another matter — but as things stand... No. They are in correspondence then... or at least she was notified at once — very well, so was I. But where do things stand? A beloved man who is so ill — it seems to me... Oh! she is perhaps there every day — what do I know of it, after all? And his mother? But if the Mackay is playing the great lady? Then it is all very well. How does she explain her fortune to him? Would Bastien not be scrupulous? Or is he a dupe like so many others? Or is Mme Mackay pure, and all that is said would then be mere calumny?
And she will have inherited from some relation? Everything is possible. She used to go to Cartwright's — but she goes no more. I also went to Cartwright's, and about me too one can say stupid things — especially six, seven years ago! And yet!
I should be the last person to believe what people say. And yet men have told Maman that this chaste Ophelia was worthy to be president of the ladies' board of the hospice of nocturnal hospitality... in the crudest sense of the word.
Well then? Very well — that may be over, and now she has made her fortune and works only as an amateur...
And then?
One loses oneself in conjecture.
Enough of this kitchen gossip. Enough.
What is amusing is that I see faults in Bastien's painting. I look at his pictures and think that this or that should have been done differently... as when I look at what I do myself.
There are two drops of blood on my handkerchief. I write to Potain. What is the use.
Do I really care to live? My life is worth nothing, and nothing holds me to it.
To Neuilly this evening with the Gaillards, the priest and his sixteen-year-old daughter. As long as we were going forward there was nothing to it — there were even two pleasant stops: one at the boats, another at the railway. But the return! Everyone is tired and the conversation is terribly languid. I think of other things. And M. Gaillard slipped away. He will get a good dressing-down from his wife.
As for Maman — as on every occasion when one must be cheerful, she is funereal and sinister.
Ah! what misery life is — how right Maupassant is. And he is a man, after all — he is thirty-three, he has been in love, and... all that follows. He knows everything. And he has found only the void!
And I? Art? I no longer know what to do. A new painting will revive me — in the meantime I feel utterly lost!
I have read Sapho and I know what a liaison is... And then, Mme Mackay is charming — she now has every distinction, being rich and playing the woman of the world. And the sick monkey on the rue Legendre is mad about her. One would need a possessive nature indeed to want everything undivided! What does it matter to me! We are friends — he thinks I have talent and is fond of me. What more does one need? Well — you see! In short, what would I want? What? What? What?
That he be rid of Ophelia, that I go to see him and comfort him in his illness, and that he end by loving me.
There. It is clear and it is true.
That is how one should say things, instead of going round and round them.
Now if you ask me why I want that? Well, because life is sad and it seems to me it would be something good.