Her most familiar converse is between herself and her Creator, whom her imagination pictures as a kind of superior great-grandfather, very grand and powerful, and the only One in whom she can confide. To Him she lays bare her heart, beseeching Him to give her that which is a necessity of life to her, and she makes numerous promises, to be fulfilled only on condition that her prayers are granted; she respects what she conceives to be His wishes with regard to prayer and almsgiving, and overwhelms Him with reproaches if these are of no avail. And they are of no avail. Her voice, which has been tried and praised by the highest musical authorities in Paris, is being gradually undermined by a disease of the throat, and the duke marries; thus her hopes of becoming famous and of gaining a great love are gone, gone forever.
Those were the first and second cruel wounds wherewith life made its presence felt in this sensitive soul; they were wounds which never healed, and which imparted hidden veins of venom to the healthy parts of her being.
Does not this remind us of the fairy tale about wounds that never heal? Is not this just the way that the wounds made by Fate, or by human beings, in our souls continue to bleed forever? They are like tender places, which shrink from the touch throughout a lifetime, and wither if a breath passes over them. The more sensitive a person is, the more painful they are, and nothing is so easily wounded as a growing organism. The nerves have a good memory, better even than the brain, and there are some wounds received in youth and impressed during growth which seem to have been wiped out ages ago, till suddenly they present the appearance of a putrefying spot, a poisonous place, the point of disintegration of the entire organism. Or there may be something crippled in the person’s vitality. They live on, but one muscle, perhaps only a very small one, is strained and just a little out of order, and the soul is compelled to replace what the body lacks by means of extra exertion, which is afterwards paid for by excessive weariness.
There are some sluggish natures, especially among women, who exert their strength to the least possible degree, and do their work in a half-hearted manner. There are also souls which seem all aglow with the psychic and sensuous warmth of their natures, who carry the whole substance of their being in the hand, and who give themselves up entirely to the interest of what they are feeling and wishing for at the moment. Their path is strewn with fragments of their life, which fall off dead, and every stroke aimed at them hits the heart. Their soul has no covering to protect them from disappointment; neither have they the forgetful sleep of animals, wherein the body is at rest. But such natures are generally possessed of an endless supply of self-sustaining strength, which imbues them with the power to grow again; and although their wounds are plentiful, their germinating cells are plenteous also. The parts that are crippled remain crippled still, but new possibilities are continually developing in new directions.
The young girl of whose silly, half-fancied love story I have made so much, was one of these natures. She was formed of the material out of which destiny either moulds women who become the greatest of their sex, or else casts them aside, discarded and broken. It generally depends upon some very trifling matter which of the two takes place. Marie was an exceedingly spoiled child when the first blow fell; but there was something lacking in her nature—a dead spot that revealed itself with the destruction of her voice—while her body was blossoming into womanhood. There was a dead spot somewhere without as well, something that lacked in life, else it were not possible to long so ardently and not obtain. There was something that gazed at her with evil, ghost-like eyes, causing her nerves to quiver beneath its icy breath. She was a brave girl. She did not complain, did not look back, but drew herself together, silent and determined. Her passionate love of work took the form of painting, and as she could not become a great singer, she meant to be a great painter. But a part of her being congealed and withered away; her young heart had expanded to receive a return of the love it had so freely given, and was left unsatisfied.
The years passed in much the same way as they had passed before for this spoiled child of fortune. A few people who were indifferent to her died, and others came who were no less indifferent. They travelled from Nice to Paris, and from Paris to Nice, but she was equally lonely everywhere. She had no playfellows, no girl friends, no school-room companions, and to life’s contrasts she remained a stranger. Her cousin Dina was the only one who was always with her, and she was the typical girl,—a pretty, good-natured nonentity. And thus, though always lonely, she was never alone. Wherever she went, her mother and aunt went with her, and wherever they did not go, Marie Bashkirtseff did not go either. In all her journeyings, she never received a single impression for herself alone; it was always reflected at the same moment in the sun-glasses of her aunt and mother, and never a word did she hear but was also heard by her duennas. No man was allowed within the circle of her acquaintance until he had first been judged suitable from a marriageable, as well as a social point of view. The female atmosphere by which she was surrounded paralyzed every other.
It was her destiny!
Life was empty around her, and in the void her excited nerves became even more and more centred upon her own ego. Her opinion of herself assumed gigantic proportions, and whatever there had been of soul grandeur in her nature was changed into admiration of self. And yet, in spite of all, this girl, who was undoubtedly a genius, never realized her own power to the full. The natural nobility of her feelings assumed a moral, bourgeois dress, and her young senses, which had manifested such a passionate craving at their first awakening, withered and grew numb.
She was sixteen when she experienced her second disappointment in love, and it became for her the turning-point of her inner life.
At her earnest request the family had gone to Rome. It was the time of the Carnival, and after the conventional life at Nice, the sudden outbreak of merriment in the Eternal City called forth a frivolous mood in every one. There was something delightful in the ease with which acquaintances were made, and the simple, straightforward manner in which homage was done. A young man makes love to Dina; he belongs to an old, aristocratic, Roman family, and is the nephew of an influential cardinal. Marie entices him away from her, and the young Italian falls a prey to the brilliant fascination and wild coquetry of her manner. He is dazzled by such aggressive conduct on the part of so young a girl, and the equivocal character of it spurs him on. He storms her with declarations of love, and Marie reciprocates his passion,—not very seriously perhaps, but her senses, her vanity, her pride, all are on fire. The young man communicates to her something of his habitual good spirits, and her head, no less than the heads of her mother and aunt, is completely turned at the prospect of such a distinguished parti. The family set to work in good earnest to bring matters to a climax, for which object they employ suitable deputies, while Marie persistently holds the legitimate joys of marriage before the face of her importunate lover. The Italian slips past these dangerous rocks with the dexterity of an eel. He knows what Marie and the house of Bashkirtseff, convinced as they are of the grandeur of their Russian ancestry, cannot realize,—that for him, the heir and nephew of the cardinal, no marriage will be considered suitable unless it brings with it connection with the nobility, or the advantages of an immense fortune; and in this opinion he fully concurs. The result is that they are always at cross purposes: he talks of love, she of marriage; he of tête-à-têtes on the staircase after midnight, she of betrothal kisses between lunch and dinner under the auspices of her family. When his allusions to his uncle’s disapproval of a marriage with a heretical Russian lady from the provinces do not produce any effect on the family other than indignation, expressive of their wounded feelings, he goes away, and allows himself to be sent into retreat in a monastery. While there, he ascertains that the Bashkirtseffs have left Rome and given up all desire to have such a vacillating creature for a son-in-law. They go to Nice, and no more is said about him until Marie persuades her family to return to Rome, where she meets him at a party, but only to discover that he loves her when there, and forgets her again the moment that she is out of sight. This was the second time that she had knocked at the door of life; and, as on the former occasion, Fate held back the joys which she seemed to have in store, only opening the door wide enough to let in the face of a grinning Punchinello.