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. Yet if he loves me very
much, very deeply, if he cannot live without me