Chapter 4: The Diary of Rose Bonifait

July 4, 1852

I have spent all morning at the abattoir. You cannot imagine how much it upsets me, but I have to go – it’s my duty as an artist to understand the anatomy of the animals that I paint – from their skin to the very core, bone and sinew. It makes me glad every time I visit that I am vegetarian – even though Madame Gris complains so much about how difficult it is to feed me with my fussy, strange ways. One day, she will see. It will be considered normal to do as I do and choose not to eat God’s creatures.

This morning it was with the usual sense of dread that I went in. But I steeled myself and I did it, and I stopped myself from gagging. I sat in the corner as the men went about their gruesome task and I drew. I looked at every detail, and I tried to be detached and professional, as if I were, say, a vet or a surgeon. It is easier said than done, however, and two hours later, when I emerged into the sunlight with six sketches in my book, I was shaking and in floods of tears. All I could think to do was to escape the misery of what I had witnessed by doing the one thing in the world that I love more than painting. And so I went to the stables beneath our Parisian city apartment and I saddled Celine.

Of all the horses we own, she is the one. No other mare in our stables is as clever as she is, or as kind.

I remember summer holidays at the chateau in Fontainebleau when Mama would put me on terrible Sebastian. That tiny grey pony with the flashing eyes and dainty hooves! Oh, Sebastian – what a terror he was! If you were on his back then his only thought was to get rid of you! His favourite trick was to sweep underneath the boughs of a low-branched tree to knock you off. If this failed then he bucked like a bronco. And if that didn’t work he would take himself off into the field and drop to his knees, preparing to roll on top of you! If you didn’t leap off his back at this point, he would crush you, and the trick was so effective that he broke the saddle twice before Mama gave up on saddles entirely. After that, she just used a saddle blanket and a surcingle on him to save the expense of buying a new saddle time and again. Sebastian was the closest thing I have ever seen to pure evil and yet, oh how we loved Sebastian! It was only once Mama despaired of his endless naughty antics and realised that despite his diminutive size he might actually do us harm, that she retired him and bought us Celine to ride instead.