written in a large, unformed hand, dashing, variable, following the
successive impressions of a changeful, sensitive nature.

Very few documents exist concerning children, in whom the nineteenth
century alone began to interest itself.

In fact the real personality of the child is very secret, for it
distrusts these comprehensive and authoritative beings, "grown-up
people." And it hides its ironical observations, its dreams, all the
ardour of its little soul.

Children play. They have built, with sand and twigs, a fantastic
world peopled with their familiar toys: a grey cloth elephant, a
multi-coloured duck as big as that white plush bear. And they are in
the jungle, tracking, hunting, killing. Then they dance round to a
secret rhythm. Stop to look at them, the game will end. The little
mouths will become silent. The child will always hide the ingenuous
observations it makes with its clear eyes.

Therefore it seems to us very interesting to show a little girl's
existence, not told from the distance of past years, but written day
by day. Marie Bashkirtseff was a child of precocious intelligence,
ardent will, extreme intensity of life. Maurice Barrès defines it
sensibly in saying that she had, "when very young, amalgamated five
or six exceptional souls in her delicate, already failing body."

The nomad life led by her parents, residences in Paris, London,
Nice, Rome, hastened the development of a vivid intelligence.

This little "uprooted" girl accommodated herself to these varied