“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 Barres 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.”

Renee D’ULMES.

[Footnote A:  La Legende 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!