Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) Part 11

This plunges me into inconceivable torture. If you knew how I dread spending the Carnival without a single amus.e.m.e.nt! We found the amba.s.sadress's card at our home, so she has returned the visit. It is rather late, all the same. Her cousin came at dinner time. The Grand Duke of L---- asked who we were (who is that pretty Russian?).

B---- says Mamma ought to go to call on the Marquise de M----. He says it is the custom here, especially from a foreigner to a Roman lady. Let Mamma go anywhere, provided that I can go where I like. My torture has no bounds, I am dying of it every instant. Do you want a proof of my despair? There are times when I hope to marry A---- and be something at Nice with P----; that gives the measure of my discouragement, my desperation.

I have had this humiliating thought once or twice. I tell you to show you how low I descend, how vexed, how martyrised I am to live in this way. Who will restore my lost time, my best time? I have used every expression, and am dying because I cannot make myself understood.

I have written to C---- and to B----. I was in a hurry to tell them the good news. I have the very weak middle notes which accompany the abnormal compa.s.s of my voice. I have found a method of singing that strengthens them wonderfully, so that they are almost as strong as the rest. This delights me, and I am eager to write about it to B----, who is so much interested in my voice. But for that, it would have required two years study to render them satisfactory. I thank G.o.d, and will pray to Him for the other things.

Thursday, January 20th, 1876.

After three years study, if no accident happens, I shall have a voice such as is rarely heard, and I shall not yet be twenty.

F---- is severe and just.

I am afraid to say all that I think of my voice; a strange modesty closes my lips. Yet I have always spoken of myself as if I were talking of some one else, which has perhaps made people think me blind and arrogant.

Friday, January 21st, 1876.

I want to have a gown like the one worn by Dante's Beatrice.

Sat.u.r.day, January 22nd, 1876.

Still another proof of the falsity of the cards. Yesterday I had a sort of sorceress come and she pretended to give me good luck. She told me to call the person I wanted. I called A---- and that woman told me he could not live without me; that he was dying of grief and jealousy, and he was especially jealous because a wicked woman had told him that I loved another man.

May all the witches die! May all the cards burn! They are nothing but lies!

Sunday, January 23d, 1876.

I am making a large white garment for the house, for the spring, in Nice. Nice, miserable city, why cannot I live there as I like? In Nice I know everybody, but to live in Nice except as a queen isn't worth while.

I am sad, I am in a foreign country, I long to return home, just for a single day, for if I stayed longer, I should want to go back.

In the evening we went to the Apollo theatre, they gave the _Vestal_ and a ballet. I wore white with a Greek coiffure. There were a great many people, and an especially large number of men. Not a single woman between our box and the stage.

_From Monday, January 24th, to February 10th, 1876: Rome, Hotel de Londres, Piazza di Spagna._

I swear that all these tragic and jealous remarks about A---- were written under the influence of romantic reading, and that I only half believed them while I was writing, exciting myself for the pleasure of it, and I greatly regret these exaggerations.

The archimandrite has been at our house. He is a charming man who, after having been a soldier, turned monk from despair at having lost his wife. He told us that there was a Madame S---- who greatly desired to make Mamma's acquaintance.

Returning from the photographer's, such dismal thoughts filled my brain that I did not dress and let Mamma and Dina go out without me.

Being left alone, I am very sad, I am singing "Mignon."

Tuesday, January 25th, 1876.

I am homesick. I took a singing lesson, and then went out with Mamma. We went to M. de E----'s studio. He requested permission to present a very elegant and popular M. Benard, received everywhere in society. He told us a great many things about Rome.

From there we went to Monseigneur de F----'s, who yesterday asked if we had had our audience.

This priest is turning out better and better, he has even made scandals. He told us that I had been noticed at the opera, my white dress had attracted attention, and said that to go to court we need only write to the Minister or Amba.s.sador.

"I should like," he added, "to be able to open to you the other door, as I have opened the Holy One."

"O Monseigneur," I replied, "the Holy Door is far preferable."

From there to the residence of Madame S---- (the archimandrite had told her, and she was expecting us), who is the most charming and the ugliest woman in the world. She received us in the most delightful way, and immediately spoke of the Quirinal.