She had a fine studio in a new home of the family, and was seized with an ardent desire to try sculpture—­she did a little in this art—­but that which proved to be her last and best work was her contribution to the Salon of 1884.  This brought her to the notice of the public, and she had great pleasure, although mingled with the conviction of her coming death and the doubts of her ability to do more.  Of this time she writes:  “Am I satisfied?  It is easy to answer that question; I am neither satisfied nor dissatisfied.  My success is just enough to keep me from being unhappy.  That is all.”

Again:  “I have just returned from the Salon.  We remained a long time seated on a bench before the picture.  It attracted a good deal of attention, and I smiled to myself at the thought that no one would ever imagine the elegantly dressed young girl seated before it, showing the tips of her little boots, to be the artist.  Ah, all this is a great deal better than last year!  Have I achieved a success, in the true, serious meaning of the word?  I almost think so.”

The picture was called the “Meeting,” and shows seven gamins talking together before a wooden fence at the corner of a street.  Francois Coppee wrote of it:  “It is a chef d’oeuvre, I maintain.  The faces and the attitudes of the children are strikingly real.  The glimpse of meagre landscape expresses the sadness of the poorer neighborhoods.”

Previous to this time, her picture of two boys, called “Jean and Jacques,” had been reproduced in the Russian Illustration, and she now received many requests for permission to photograph and reproduce her “Meeting,” and connoisseurs made requests to be admitted to her studio.  All this gratified her while it also surprised.  She was at work on a picture called “Spring,” for which she went to Sevres, to paint in the open.

Naturally she hoped for a Salon medal, and her friends encouraged her wish—­but alas! she was cruelly disappointed.  Many thought her unfairly treated, but it was remembered that the year before she had publicly spoken of the committee as “idiots”!

People now wished to buy her pictures and in many ways she realized that she was successful.  How pathetic her written words:  “I have spent six years, working ten hours a day, to gain what?  The knowledge of all I have yet to learn in my art, and a fatal disease!”

It is probable that the “Meeting” received no medal because it was suspected that Mlle. Bashkirtseff had been aided in her work.  No one could tell who had originated this idea, but as some medals had been given to women who did not paint their pictures alone, the committee were timid, although there seems to have been no question as to superiority.

A friendship had grown up between the families Bashkirtseff and Bastien-Lepage.  Both the great artist and the dying girl were very ill, but for some time she and her mother visited him every two or three days.  He seemed almost to live on these visits and complained if they were omitted.  At last, ill as Bastien-Lepage was, he was the better able of the two to make a visit.  On October 16th she writes of his being brought to her and made comfortable in one easy-chair while she was in another.  “Ah, if I could only paint!” he said.  “And I?” she replied.  “There is the end to this year’s picture!”