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 Barrès 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."

RENÉE D'ULMÉS.

[Footnote A: _La Légende d'une cosmopolite_.]




NEW JOURNAL OF MARIE BASHKIRTSEFF

JANUARY, 1873

(_Marie was then twelve years old_.)