Marie Bashkirtseff | Page 2

him, and that is what makes me suffer. Take away this grief, and I shall be a thousand times more unhappy. The pain makes my happiness. I live for it alone. All my thoughts are centred there. The Duc de H---- is my all. I love him so much. That is a very ancient and old-fashioned phrase, since people no longer love."
After such a passage of captivating vivacity, in which work and pleasures inflame this ardent vitality, other days,--numerous, alas! have the mere mention of a date followed by a dash. These are the stations of the disease when the charming body was weakening like a dying flower. And there were the alternations of hope, the physicians consulted when at first she believed everything, to doubt, later, all the remedies with which their pity beguiles anxiety, at last the resigned almost certainty:
"And, nevertheless, I am going to die."
Should the shortness of her existence be regretted for Marie? Certainly, thoroughly in love, she would not have found happiness in marriage, which fashionable society too often transforms into a partnership of egotisms, interests, and hypocrisy. But would not maternity have consoled her, affording her a delicious refuge, her who bent patiently over the faces of the very little children, expressed their fleeting occupations, their intent looks?
Sly death did not permit her to finish her destiny, and the little Slav preserves for us her disturbing virgin charm.
In that villa in Nice, where Marie Bashkirtseff lived, clearly appears the vision of a young girl, harmonious in the whiteness of her usual clothing, with a gaze sparkling with ardent life, her who, Maurice Barr��s says,[A] "appears to us a representation of the eternal force which calls forth heroes in each generation and that she may seem of sound sense to us, let us cherish her memory under the proud name of Our-Lady who is never satisfied."
REN��E D'ULM��S.
[Footnote A: _La L��gende d'une cosmopolite_.]

NEW JOURNAL OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF
JANUARY, 1873
(Marie was then twelve years old.)
I must tell you that ever since Baden I have thought of nothing except the Duc de H----. In the afternoon I studied. I did not go out except for half an hour on the terrace. I am very unhappy to-day. I am in a terrible state of mind; if this keeps on, I don't know what will become of me.
How fortunate people who have no secrets are!
Oh, God, in mercy save me!
The face makes very little difference! People can't love just on account of the face. Of course it does a great deal, but when there is nothing else--. They have been talking about B----. He has exactly my disposition. I am fond of society; he likes to flirt; he likes to see and to be seen; in short, he is pleased with the same things that please me. They say he is a gambler. Oh! dear! What evil genius has changed him!
Perhaps he is in love--hopelessly?
Happy love ought to make us better, but hopeless love! Oh, I believe it must be that!
No, no, he is simply dragged down like so many young men by that terrible gulf. Oh, what an accursed place! How many wretched beings it has made! Oh, fly from it! Take your sons, your husbands, your brothers away from there, or they are lost. B---- is beginning. The Duc de H---- has begun, too, and he will go on, while he might live happily. Live and be useful to society. But he spends his time with wicked men and women. He can do it as long as he has anything, and he used to be immensely rich.
Dr. V---- has said that Mademoiselle C----[A] is ill, that she may live five years or die in three weeks, because she is consumptive. How many misfortunes at once!
[Footnote A: Marie Bashkirtseff's governess.]
If, when I am grown up, I should marry B---- what a life it would be! To stay all alone, that is, surrounded by commonplace men, who will want to flirt with me, and be carried away by the whirl of pleasure. I dream of and wish for all these things, but with a husband I love and who loves me--.
Ah, who would suppose it was little Marie, a girl scarcely twelve years old; who feels all this! But what am I saying? What a dismal thought! I don't even know him, and am already marrying him--how silly I am!
I am really much vexed about all this. I am calmer now. My handwriting shows it. The spontaneous burst of indignation is a little quieted. It is soothing to write or communicate one's ideas to somebody.
B---- isn't worth while. I shall never marry him. If he begs me on his knees, I shall be--oh, I forgot the word--I shall be firm. No, that isn't the word, but I know what I mean.