A Chambermaid's Diary

September 14.

To-day, September 14, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in mild, gray, and rainy weather, I have entered upon my new place. It is the twelfth in two years. Of course I say nothing of the places which I held in previous years. It would be impossible for me to count them. Ah! I can boast of having seen interiors and faces, and dirty souls. And the end is not yet. Judging from the really extraordinary and dizzy way in which I have rolled, here and there, successively, from houses to employment-bureaus, and from employment-bureaus to houses, from the Bois de Boulogne to the Bastille, from the Observatory to Montmartre, from the Ternes to the Gobelins, everywhere, without ever succeeding in establishing myself anywhere, the masters in these days must be hard to please. It is incredible.

The affair was arranged through an advertisement in the "Figaro," and without any interview with Madame. We wrote letters to each other, that is all; a risky method, often resulting in surprises on both sides. Madame's letters are well written, it is true. But they reveal a meddlesome and fastidious character. Ah! the explanations and the commentaries that she insisted upon, the whys and the becauses. I do not know whether Madame is stingy; at any rate she is hardly ruining herself with her letter-paper. It is bought at the Louvre. I am not rich, but I have more elegance than that. I write on paper perfumed à la peau d'Espagne, beautiful paper, some of it pink, some light blue, which I have collected from my former mistresses. Some of it even bears a countess's coronet engraved upon it. That must have been a crusher for her.

Well, at last, here I am in Normandy, at Mesnil-Roy. Madame's estate, which is not far from the country, is called the Priory. This is almost all that I know of the spot where henceforth I am to live.

* * *

I am not without anxiety, or without regret, at having come, in consequence of a moment's rashness, to bury myself in the depths of the country. What I have seen of it frightens me a little, and I ask myself what further is going to happen to me here. Doubtless nothing good, and the usual worries. To worry is the clearest of our privileges. For every one who succeeds,-that is, for every one who marries a worthy young fellow or forms an alliance with an old man,-how many of us are destined to ill-luck, swept away in the great whirlwind of poverty? After all, I had no choice, and this is better than nothing.

* * *

This is not the first time that I have had a place in the country. Four years ago I had one. Oh! not for long, and in really exceptional circumstances. I remember this adventure as if it had occurred yesterday. Although the details are slightly indecorous, and even horrible, I wish to relate it. Moreover, I charitably warn my readers that it is my intention, in writing this diary, to keep nothing back, in relation either to myself or to others. On the contrary, I intend to put into it all the frankness that is in me, and, when necessary, all the brutality that is in life. It is not my fault if the souls from which we tear the veils, and which then appear in all their nakedness, exhale so strong an odor of rottenness.

Well, here it is.

I was engaged in an employment-bureau, by a sort of fat governess, to be a chambermaid in the house of a certain M. Rabour, in Touraine. The conditions accepted, it was agreed that I should take the train on such a day, at such an hour, for such a station; which was done, according to the programme.

As soon as I had given up my ticket at the exit, I found, outside, a sort of coachman with a rubicund and churlish face, who asked me:

"Are you M. Rabour's new chambermaid?"

"Yes."

"Have you a trunk?"

"Yes, I have a trunk."

"Give me your baggage ticket, and wait for me here."

He made his way to the platform. The employees hastened about him. They called him "Monsieur Louis" in a tone of friendly respect. Louis looked for my trunk in the pile of baggage, and had it placed in an English cart that stood near the exit.

"Well, will you get in?"

I took my seat beside him, and we started. The coachman looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I examined him similarly. I saw at once that I had to do with a countryman, an unpolished peasant, an untrained domestic who had never served in grand establishments. That annoyed me. For my part, I like handsome liveries. I dote on nothing so much as on white leather knee-breeches tightly fitting nervous thighs. And how lacking in elegance he was, this Louis, without driving-gloves, with a full suit of grayish-blue drugget that was too big for him, and a flat cap of glazed leather, ornamented with a double row of gold lace. No, indeed, they are slow in this region. And, with all, a scowling, brutal air, but not a bad fellow at bottom. I know these types. At first they assume a knowing air with the new people, and later a more friendly footing is arrived at. Often more friendly than one would like.

We sat a long time without saying a word. He assumed the manners of a grand coachman, holding the reins high and swinging his whip with rounded gestures. Oh! how ridiculous he was! For my part, with much dignity I surveyed the landscape, which had no special feature; simply fields, trees, and houses, just as everywhere else. He brought his horse down to a walk in order to ascend a hill, and then, suddenly, with a quizzing smile, he asked:

"I suppose that at least you have brought a good supply of shoes?"

"Undoubtedly," said I, astonished at this question, which rhymed with nothing, and still more at the singular tone in which he put it to me. "Why do you ask me that? It is a rather stupid question, don't you know, my old man?"

He nudged me slightly with his elbow, and, gliding over me a strange look whose two-fold expression of keen irony and, indeed, of jovial obscenity was unintelligible to me, he said, with a chuckle:

"Oh! yes, pretend that you know nothing. You are a good one, you are,-a jolly good one!"

Then he clacked his tongue, and the horse resumed its rapid gait.

I was puzzled. What could be the meaning of this? Perhaps nothing at all. I concluded that the good man was a little silly, that he did not know how to talk with women, and that he had been able to think of no other way to start a conversation which, however, I did not see fit to continue.

M. Rabour's estate was sufficiently large and beautiful. A pretty house, painted light green, and surrounded by broad lawns adorned with flowers and by a pine forest which gave forth an odor of turpentine. I adore the country, but, oddly enough, it makes me sad and sleepy. I was utterly stupid when I entered the vestibule where the governess was awaiting me,-she who had engaged me at the Paris employment-bureau, God knows after how many indiscreet questions as to my private habits and tastes, which ought to have made me distrustful. But in vain does one see and endure things stronger and stronger; they never teach you anything. The governess had not pleased me at the employment-bureau; here she instantly disgusted me. She seemed to me to have the air of an old procuress. She was a fat woman, and short, with puffed-up yellowish flesh, hair brushed flat and turning gray, huge and rolling breasts, and soft, damp hands as transparent as gelatine. Her grey eyes indicated wickedness, a cold, calculating, vicious wickedness. The tranquil and cruel way in which she looked at you, searching soul and flesh, was almost enough to make you blush.

She escorted me into a little reception-room, and at once left me, saying that she was going to notify Monsieur, that Monsieur wished to see me before I should begin my service.

"For Monsieur has not seen you," she added. "I have taken you, it is true, but then it is necessary that you please Monsieur."

I inspected the room. It was extremely clean and orderly. The brasses, the furniture, the floor, the doors, thoroughly polished, waxed, varnished, shone like mirrors. No clap-trap, no heavy hangings, no embroidered stuffs, such as are seen in certain Paris houses; but serious comfort, an air of rich decency, of substantial country life, regular and calm. But my! how tiresome it must be to live here!

Monsieur entered. Oh! the queer man, and how he amused me! Fancy a little old man, looking as if he had just stepped out of a band-box, freshly shaven, and as pink as a doll. Very erect, very sprightly, very inviting, in fact, he hopped about, in walking, like a little grasshopper in the fields. He saluted me, and then asked, with infinite politeness:

"What is your name, my child?"

"Célestine, Monsieur."

"Célestine!" he exclaimed. "Célestine? The devil! It is a pretty name,-that I do not deny,-but too long, my child, much too long. I will call you Marie, if you are willing. That is a very nice name, too, and it is short. And besides, I have called all my chambermaids Marie. It is a habit which it would distress me to abandon. I would rather abandon the person."

They all have this queer mania of never calling you by your real name. I was not too much astonished, having already borne all the names of all the saints in the calendar. He persisted:

"So it will not displease you if I call you Marie? That is agreed, is it?"

"Why, certainly, Monsieur."

"A pretty girl; good character; very well, very well."

He had said all this to me in a sprightly and extremely respectful way, and without staring at me, without seeming to undress me with his eyes, after the fashion of men generally. Scarcely had he looked at me. From the moment that he entered the room, his eyes had remained obstinately fixed upon my shoes.

"You have others?" he asked, after a short silence, during which it seemed to me that his eyes became strangely brilliant.

"Other names, Monsieur?"

"No, my child, other shoes."

And with a slender tongue he licked his lips, after the manner of cats.

I did not answer at once. This word shoes, reminding me of the coachman's salacious joke, had astounded me. Then that had a meaning? On a more pressing interrogation I finally answered, but in a voice somewhat hoarse and thick, as if I were, confessing a sin of gallantry:

"Yes, Monsieur, I have others."

"Glazed?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"Highly, highly glazed?"

"Why, yes, Monsieur."

"Good, good! And of yellow leather?"

"I have none of that kind, Monsieur."

"You will have to have some; I will give you some."

"Thank you, Monsieur."

"Good, good! Be still!"

I was frightened, for dull gleams had just passed over his eyes, and drops of sweat were rolling down his forehead. Thinking that he was about to faint, I was on the point of shouting, of calling for help. But the crisis quieted down, and, after a few minutes, he continued in a calmer voice, though a little saliva still foamed at the corner of his lips.

"It is nothing. It is over. Understand me, my child. I am a little of a maniac. At my age that is allowed, is it not? For instance, I do not think it proper that a woman should black her own shoes, much less mine. I have a great respect for women, Marie, and cannot endure that. So I will black your shoes, your little shoes, your dear little shoes. I will take care of them. Listen to me. Every evening, before going to bed, you will carry your shoes into my room; you will place them near the bed, on a little table, and every morning, on coming to open my windows, you will take them away again."

And, as I manifested a prodigious astonishment, he added:

"Oh! now, it is nothing enormous that I ask of you; it is a very natural thing, after all. And if you are very nice...."

Quickly he took from his pocket two louis, which he handed to me.

"If you are very nice, very obedient, I will often make you little presents. The governess will pay you your wages every month. But between ourselves, Marie, I shall often make you little presents. And what is it that I ask of you? Come, now, it is not extraordinary. Is it, then, indeed, so extraordinary?"

Monsieur was getting excited again. As he spoke his eyelids rapidly rose and fell, like leaves in a tempest.

"Why do you say nothing, Marie? Say something. Why do you not walk? Walk a little, that I may see them move, that I may see them live,-your little shoes."

He knelt down, kissed my shoes, kneaded them with his feverish and caressing fingers, unlaced them. And, while kissing, kneading, and caressing them, he said, in a supplicating voice, in the voice of a weeping child:

"Oh! Marie, Marie, your little shoes; give them to me directly, directly, directly. I want them directly. Give them to me."

I was powerless. Astonishment had paralyzed me. I did not know whether I was really living or dreaming. Of Monsieur's eyes I saw nothing but two little white globes streaked with red. And his mouth was all daubed with a sort of soapy foam.

At last he took my shoes away and shut himself up with them in his room for two hours.

"Monsieur is much pleased with you," said the governess to me, in showing me over the house. "Try to continue to please him. The place is a good one."

Four days later, in the morning, on going at the usual hour to open the windows, I came near fainting with horror in the chamber. Monsieur was dead. Stretched on his back in the middle of the bed, he lay with all the rigidity of a corpse. He had not struggled. The bed-clothing was not disarranged. There was not the slightest trace of shock, of agony, of clinched hands striving to strangle Death. And I should have thought him asleep, if his face had not been violet, frightfully violet, the sinister violet of the egg-plant. And,-terrifying spectacle, which, still more than this face, caused me to quake with fear,-Monsieur held, pressed between his teeth, one of my shoes, so firmly pressed between his teeth that, after useless and horrible efforts, I was obliged to cut the leather with a razor, in order to tear it from him.

I am no saint; I have known many men, and I know, by experience, all the madness, all the vileness, of which they are capable. But a man like Monsieur? Oh! indeed, is it not ridiculous all the same that such types exist? And where do they go in search of all their conceits, when it is so simple and so good to love each other prettily, as other people do?

* * *

I do not think that anything of that kind will happen to me here. Here, evidently, they are of another sort. But is it better? Is it worse? As to that, I know nothing.

There is one thing that torments me. I ought, perhaps, to have finished, once for all, with all these dirty places, and squarely taken the step from domesticity into gallantry, like so many others that I have known, and who-I say it without pride-had fewer "advantages" than I. Though I am not what is called pretty, I am better; without conceit I may say that I have an atmosphere, a style, which many society women and many women of the demi-monde have often envied me. A little tall, perhaps, but supple, slender, and well-formed, with very beautiful blonde hair, very beautiful deep-blue eyes, an audacious mouth, and, finally, an original manner and a turn of mind, very lively and languishing at once, that pleases men. I might have succeeded. But, in addition to the fact that, by my own fault, I have missed some astonishing opportunities, which probably will never come to me again, I have been afraid. I have been afraid, for one never knows where that will lead you. I have rubbed against so many miseries in that sphere of life; I have received so many distressing confidences. And those tragic calvaries from the Depot to the Hospital, which one does not always escape! And, for a background to the picture, the hell of Saint-Lazare! Such things cause one to reflect and shudder. Who knows, too, whether I should have had, as woman, the same success that I have had as chambermaid? The particular charm which we exercise over men does not lie solely in ourselves, however pretty we may be. It depends largely, as I have had occasion to know, on our environment, on the luxury and vice of our surroundings, on our mistresses themselves and on the desire which they excite. In loving us, it is a little of them and much of their mystery that men love in us.

But there is something else. In spite of my dissolute life, I have luckily preserved, in the depths of my being, a very sincere religious feeling, which saves me from definitive falls and holds me back at the edge of the worst abysses. Ah! if there were no religion; if, on evenings of gloom and moral distress, there were no prayer in the churches; if it were not for the Holy Virgin, and Saint Anthony of Padua, and all the rest of the outfit,-we should be much more unhappy, that is sure. And what would become of us, and how far we should go, the devil only knows!

Finally,-and this is more serious,-I have not the least defence against men. I should be the constant victim of my disinterestedness and their pleasure. I am too amorous,-yes, I am too much in love with love, to draw any profit whatever out of love. It is stronger than I; I cannot ask money of one who gives me happiness and sets ajar for me the radiant gates of Ecstasy.

So here I am, then, at the Priory, awaiting what? Indeed, I do not know. The wisest way would be not to think about it, and trust everything to luck. Perhaps it is thus that things go best. Provided that to-morrow, and pursued even here by that pitiless mischance which never leaves me, I am not forced once more to quit my place. That would annoy me. For some time I have had pains in my loins, a feeling of weariness in my whole body; my stomach is becoming impaired, my memory is weakening; I am growing more irritable and nervous. Just now, when looking in the glass, I discovered that my face had a really tired look, and that my complexion-that amber complexion of which I was so proud-had taken on an almost ashen hue. Can I be growing old already? I do not wish to grow old yet. In Paris it is difficult to take care of one's self. There is no time for anything. Life there is too feverish, too tumultuous; one comes continually in contact with too many people, too many things, too many pleasures, too much of the unexpected. But you have to go on, just the same. Here it is calm. And what silence! The air that one breathes must be healthy and good. Ah! if, at the risk of being bored, I could but rest a little.

In the first place, I have no confidence. Certainly Madame is nice enough with me. She has seen fit to pay me some compliments on my appearance, and to congratulate herself on the reports that she has received concerning me. Oh! her head, if she knew that these reports are false, or at least that they were given simply to oblige! What especially astonishes her is my elegance. And then, as a rule, they are nice the first day, these camels. While all is new, all is beautiful. That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known. Especially as Madame has very cold, hard eyes, which do not please me,-the eyes of a miser, full of keen suspicion and spying inquiry. Nor do I like her dry and too thin lips, which seem to be covered with a whitish crust, or her curt, cutting speech, which turns an amiable word almost into an insult or a humiliation. When, in questioning me concerning this or that, concerning my aptitudes and my past, she looked at me with that tranquil and sly impudence of an old customs official which they all have, I said to myself:

"There is no mistake about it. Here is another one who is bound to put everything under lock and key, to count every evening her grapes and her lumps of sugar, and to put marks on the bottles. Oh! yes, indeed, we change and change, but we find always the same thing."

Nevertheless, it will be necessary to see, and not rely on this first impression. Among so many mouths that have spoken to me, among so many looks that have searched my soul, I shall find perhaps, some day,-who knows?-a friendly mouth, a sympathetic look. It costs me nothing to hope.

As soon as I had arrived, still under the deadening influence of four hours in a third-class railway carriage, and before any one in the kitchen had even thought of offering me a slice of bread, Madame took me over the house, from cellar to garret, in order to immediately familiarize me with my duties. Oh! she does not waste her time, or mine. How big this house is! And how many things and corners it contains! Oh! no, thank you, to keep it in order as it should be, four servants would not suffice. Besides the ground floor, which in itself is very important,-for there are two little pavilions, in the form of a terrace, which constitute additions and continuations,-it has two stories, in which I shall have to be forever going up and down, since Madame, who stays in a little room near the dining-room, has had the ingenious idea of placing the linen-room, where I am to work, at the top of the house, by the side of our chambers. And cupboards, and bureaus, and drawers, and store-rooms, and litters of all sorts,-if you like these things, there are plenty of them. Never shall I find myself in all this.

At every minute, in showing me something, Madame said to me:

"You will have to be careful about this, my girl. This is very pretty, my girl. This is very rare, my girl. This is very expensive, my girl."

She could not, then, call me by my name, instead of saying all the time, "My girl," this, "My girl," that, in that tone of wounding domination which discourages the best wills and straightway puts such a distance, so much hatred, between our mistresses and us? Do I call her "little mother"? And then Madame has always on her lips the words "very expensive." It is provoking. Everything that belongs to her, even paltry articles that cost four sous, are "very expensive." One has no idea where the vanity of the mistress of a house can hide itself. It is really pitiful. In explaining to me the working of an oil lamp, which in no way differed from all other lamps, she said to me:

"My girl, you know that this lamp is very expensive, and that it can be repaired only in England. Take care of it, as if it were the apple of your eye."

Oh! the cheek that they have, and the fuss that they make about nothing! And when I think that it is all done just to humiliate you, to astonish you!

And the house is not so much after all. There is really no reason to be so proud of it. The exterior, to be sure, with the great clusters of trees that sumptuously frame it and the gardens that descend to the river in gentle slopes, ornamented with broad rectangular lawns, gives an impression of some importance. But within it is sad, old, rickety, and has a musty smell. I do not understand how they can live in it. Nothing but rats' nests, break-neck wooden stairways, whose warped steps tremble and creak beneath your feet; low and dark passage-ways, whose floors, instead of being covered with soft carpets, consist of badly-laid tiles, of a faded red color, and glazed, glazed, slippery, slippery. The too thin partitions, made of too dry planks, make the chambers as sonorous as the inside of a violin. Oh! it is all hollow and provincial. It surely is not furnished in the Paris fashion. In all the rooms old mahogany, old worm-eaten stuffs, old worn-out faded rugs, and arm-chairs and sofas, ridiculously stiff, without springs, worm-eaten, and rickety. How they must grind one's shoulders! Really, I, who am so fond of light-colored hangings, broad elastic divans, where one can stretch voluptuously on heaps of cushions, and all these pretty modern furnishings, so luxurious, so rich, and so gay,-I feel utterly saddened by the gloomy sadness of these. And I am afraid that I shall never get accustomed to such an absence of comfort, to such a lack of elegance, to so much old dust and so many dead forms.

* * *

Nor is Madame dressed in Parisian fashion. She is lacking in style, and is unacquainted with the great dressmakers. She is somewhat of a fright, as they say. Although she shows a certain pretension in her costumes, she is at least ten years behind the fashion. And what a fashion! Still, she would not be bad-looking, if she chose not to be; at least, she would not be too bad-looking. Her worst fault is that she awakens in you no sympathy,-that she is a woman in nothing. But she has regular features, pretty hair naturally blonde, and a beautiful skin; in fact, she has too much color, as if she were suffering from some internal malady. I know this type of woman, and I am not to be deceived by the brilliancy of their complexion. They are pink on the surface, yes, but within they are rotten. They cannot stand up straight, they cannot walk, they cannot live, except by the aid of girdles, trusses, pessaries, and a whole collection of secret horrors and complex mechanisms. Which does not prevent them from making a show in society. Yes, indeed, they are coquettish, if you please; they flirt in the corners, they exhibit their painted flesh, they ogle, they wiggle; and yet they are fit for nothing but preservation in alcohol. Oh! misfortune! One has but little satisfaction with them, I assure you, and it is not always agreeable to be in their service.

I do not know whether it is from temperament or from organic indisposition, but, judging from the expression of Madame's face, her severe gestures, and the stiff bending of her body, she cares nothing at all for love. She has the sharpness and sourness of an old maid, and her whole person seems dried up and mummified,-a rare thing with blondes. Not such women as Madame does beautiful music, like that of "Faust",-oh! that "Faust"!-cause to fall with languor and swoon voluptuously in the arms of a handsome man. Oh, no indeed! She does not belong to that class of very ugly women into whose faces the ardor of sex sometimes puts so much of radiant life, so much of seductive beauty. After all, though, one cannot trust too securely in airs like those of Madame. I have known women of the most severe and crabbed type, who drove away all thought of desire and love, and who yet were famous rovers.

Although Madame forces herself to be amiable, she surely is not up to date, like some that I have seen. I believe her to be very wicked, very spying, very fault-finding,-a dirty character and a wicked heart. She must be continually at people's heels, pestering them in all ways. "Do you know how to do this?" and "Do you know how to do that?" or again: "Are you in the habit of breaking things? Are you careful? Have you a good memory? Are you orderly?" There is no end to it. And also: "Are you clean? I am very particular about cleanliness; I pass over many things, but I insist upon cleanliness." Does she take me for a farm girl, a peasant, a country servant? Cleanliness? Oh! I know that chestnut. They all say that. And often, when one goes to the bottom of things, when one turns up their skirts and examines their linen, how filthy they are! Sometimes it is disgusting enough to turn one's stomach.

Consequently I distrust Madame's cleanliness. When she showed me her dressing-room, I did not notice any bath, or any of the things that are necessary to a woman who takes proper care of herself. And what a scant supply she has of bibelots, bottles, and all those private and perfumed articles with which I am so fond of messing! I long, for the sake of amusement, to see Madame naked. She must be a pretty sight.

In the evening, as I was setting the table, Monsieur entered the dining-room. He had just returned from a hunt. He is a very tall man, with broad shoulders, a heavy black moustache, and a dull complexion. His manners are a little heavy and awkward, but he seems good-natured. Evidently he is not a man of genius, like M. Jules Lema?tre, whom I have so often served in the Rue Christophe-Colomb, or a man of elegance, like M. de Janzé. Ah, M. de Janzé! There was a man for you! Yet he is sympathetic. His thick and curly hair, his bull neck, his calves that look like a wrestler's, his thick, intensely red, and smiling lips, testify to his strength and good humor. He is not indifferent. That I saw directly from his mobile, sniffing, sensual nose, and from his extremely brilliant eyes, which are at once gentle and fun-loving. Never, I think, have I met a human being with such eyebrows, thick to the point of obscenity, and with so hairy hands. Like most men of little intelligence and great muscular development, he is very timid.

He surveyed me with a very queer air, an air in which there was kindness, surprise, and satisfaction,-something also of salaciousness, but without impudence, something of an undressing look, but without brutality. It is evident that Monsieur is not accustomed to such chambermaids as I, that I astonish him, and that I have made a great impression on him at the start. He said to me, with a little embarrassment:

"Ah! Ah! So you are the new chambermaid?"

I bent forward, slightly lowered my eyes, and then, modest and mutinous at once, I answered simply, in my gentlest voice:

"Why, yes, Monsieur."

Then he stammered:

"So you have come? That's very good, that's very good."

He would have liked to say something further,-was trying, indeed, to think of something to say,-but, being neither eloquent or at his ease, he did not find anything. I was greatly amused at his embarrassment. But, after a short silence, he asked:

"You come from Paris, like that?"

"Yes, Monsieur."

"That's very good, that's very good."

And growing bolder:

"What is your name?"

"Célestine, Monsieur."

He rubbed his hands,-a mannerism of his,-and went on:

"Célestine. Ah! Ah! that's very good. Not a common name; in fact, a pretty name. Provided Madame does not oblige you to change it. She has that mania."

I answered, in a tone of dignified submission:

"I am at Madame's disposition."

"Undoubtedly, undoubtedly. But it is a pretty name."

I almost burst out laughing. Monsieur began to walk up and down the room; then, suddenly, he sat down in a chair, stretched out his legs, and, putting into his look something like an apology, and into his voice something like a prayer, he asked:

"Well, Célestine,-for my part, I shall always call you Célestine,-will you help me to take off my boots? That does not annoy you, I hope."

"Certainly not, Monsieur."

"Because, you see, these confounded boots are very difficult to manage; they come off very hard."

With a movement that I tried to make harmonious and supple, and even provocative, I knelt before him, and, while I was helping him to take off his boots, which were damp and covered with mud, I was perfectly conscious that the perfumes of my neck were exciting his nose, and that his eyes were following with increasing interest the outlines of my form as seen through my gown. Suddenly he murmured:

"Great heavens! Célestine, but you smell good."

Without raising my eyes, I assumed an air of innocence:

"I, Monsieur?"

"Surely, you; it can hardly be my feet."

"Oh! Monsieur!"

And this "Oh! Monsieur!" at the same time that it was a protest in favor of his feet, was also a sort of friendly reprimand,-friendly to the point of encouragement,-for his familiarity. Did he understand? I think so, for again, with more force, and even with a sort of amorous trembling, he repeated:

"Célestine, you smell awfully good,-awfully good."

Ah! but the old gentleman is making free. I appeared as if slightly scandalized by his insistence, and kept silence. Timid as he is, and knowing nothing of the tricks of women, Monsieur was disturbed. He feared undoubtedly that he had gone too far, and, suddenly changing his idea, he asked:

"Are you getting accustomed to the place, Célestine?"

That question? Was I getting accustomed to the place? And I had been there but three hours. I had to bite my lips to keep from laughing. The old gentleman has queer ways; and, really, he is a little stupid.

But that makes no difference. He does not displease me. In his very vulgarity he reveals a certain power and masculinity which are not disagreeable to me.

When his boots had been taken off, and to leave him with a good impression of me, I asked him, in my turn:

"I see Monsieur is a hunter. Has Monsieur had a good hunt to-day?"

"I never have good hunts, Célestine," he answered, shaking his head. "I hunt for the sake of walking,-for the sake of riding,-that I may not be here, where I find it tiresome."

"Ah! Monsieur finds it tiresome here?"

After a pause, he gallantly corrected himself.

"That is to say, I did find it tiresome. For now, you see, it is different."

Then, with a stupid and moving smile:

"Célestine?"

"Monsieur."

"Will you get me my slippers? I ask your pardon."

"But, Monsieur, it is my business."

"Yes, to be sure; they are under the stairs, in a little dark closet, at the left."

I believe that I shall get all that I want of this type. He is not shrewd; he surrenders at the start. Ah! one could lead him far.

* * *

The dinner, not very luxurious, consisting of the leavings from the day before, passed off without incident, almost silently. Monsieur devours, and Madame picks fastidiously at the dishes with sullen gestures and disdainful mouthings. But she absorbs powders, syrups, drops, pills, an entire pharmacy which you have to be very careful to place on the table, at every meal, beside her plate. They talked very little, and what they did say concerned local matters and people of little or no interest to me. But I gathered that they have very little company. Moreover, it was plain that their thoughts were not on what they were saying. They were watching me, each according to the ideas that prompted him or her, each moved by a different curiosity; Madame, severe and stiff, contemptuous even, more and more hostile, and dreaming already of all the dirty tricks that she would play me; Monsieur, slyly, with very significant winks, and, although he tried to conceal them, with strange looks at my hands. Really, I don't know what there is about my hands that so excites men. For my part, I seemed to be taking no notice of their game. I went and came with dignity, reserved, adroit, and distant. Ah! if they could have seen my soul, if they could have heard my soul, as I saw and heard theirs!

I adore waiting on table. It is there that one surprises one's masters in all the filthiness, in all the baseness of their inner natures. Prudent at first, and watchful of each other, little by little they reveal themselves, exhibit themselves as they are, without paint and without veils, forgetting that some one is hovering around them, listening and noting their defects, their moral humps, the secret sores of their existence, and all the infamies and ignoble dreams that can be contained in the respectable brains of respectable people. To collect these confessions, to classify them, to label them in our memory, for use as a terrible weapon on the day of settlement, is one of the great and intense joys of our calling, and the most precious revenge for our humiliations.

From this first contact with my new masters I have obtained no precise and formal indications. But I feel that things do not go well here, that Monsieur is nothing in the house, that Madame is everything, that Monsieur trembles before Madame like a little child. Oh! he hasn't a merry time of it, the poor man! Surely he sees, hears, and suffers all sorts of things. I fancy that I shall get some amusement out of it, at times. At dessert, Madame, who, during the meal, had been continually sniffing at my hands, my arms, and my waist, said, in a clear and cutting tone:

"I do not like the use of perfumes."

As I did not answer, pretending to ignore the fact that the remark was addressed to me, she added:

"Do you hear, Célestine?"

"Very well, Madame."

Then I looked stealthily at poor Monsieur, who likes perfumes, or who at least likes my perfume. With his elbows on the table, apparently indifferent, but really humiliated and distressed, he was following the flight of a wasp which had been lingering over a plate of fruit. And there was now a dismal silence in this dining-room, which the twilight had just invaded, and something inexpressibly sad, something unspeakably heavy, fell from the ceiling on these two beings, concerning whom I really asked myself of what use they are and what they are doing on earth.

"The lamp, Célestine."

It was Madame's voice, sharper than ever in the silence and the shade. It made me start.

"Do you not see that it is dark? I should not have to ask you for the lamp. Let it be the last time."

While lighting the lamp,-this lamp which can be repaired only in England,-I had a strong desire to cry out to poor Monsieur:

"Just wait a little, my old man, and fear nothing, and don't distress yourself. You shall eat and drink the perfumes that you so love, and of which you are so deprived. You shall breathe them, I promise you; you shall breathe them in my hair, on my lips, on my neck. And the two of us will lead this blockhead a merry dance, I answer for it."

And, to emphasize this silent invocation, I took care, as I placed the lamp upon the table, to slightly brush against Monsieur's arm, and I went out.

* * *

The servants' hall is not gay. Besides myself, there are only two domestics,-a cook, who is always scolding, and a gardener-coachman, who never says a word. The cook's name is Marianne; that of the gardener-coachman, Joseph. Stupid peasants. And what heads they have! She, fat, soft, flabby, sprawling, a neck emerging in a triple cushion from a dirty neckkerchief which looks as if she wiped her kettles with it, two enormous and shapeless breasts rolling beneath a sort of blue cotton camisole covered with grease, her too short dress disclosing thick ankles and big feet encased in grey woolen; he, in shirt-sleeves, work-apron, and wooden shoes, shaven, dry, nervous, with an evil grimace on his lips which stretch from ear to ear, and a devious gait, the sly movements of a sacristan. Such are my two companions.

No dining-room for the servants. We take our meals in the kitchen, at the same table where, during the day, the cook does her dirty work, carves her meats, cleans her fish, and cuts up her vegetables, with fingers fat and round as sausages. Really, that is scarcely proper. The fire in the stove renders the atmosphere of the room stifling; odors of old grease, of rancid sauces, of continual fryings, circulate in the air. While we eat, a kettle in which the dogs' soup is boiling exhales a fetid vapor that attacks your throat and makes you cough. One almost vomits. More respect is shown for prisoners in their cells and dogs in their kennels.

We had bacon and cabbage, and stinking cheese; for drink, sour cider. Nothing else. Earthen plates, with cracked enamel, and which smell of burnt grease, and tin forks, complete this pretty service.

Being too new in the house, I did not wish to complain. But neither did I wish to eat. Do further damage to my stomach, no, thank you!

"Why don't you eat?" asked the cook.

"I am not hungry."

I uttered this in a very dignified tone; then Marianne grunted: "Perhaps Mademoiselle must have truffles?"

Without showing anger, but with a stiff and haughty air, I replied:

"Why, you know, I have eaten truffles. Not everybody here can say as much."

That shut her up.

Meantime the gardener-coachman was filling his mouth with big pieces of bacon and examining me stealthily. I cannot say why, but this man has an embarrassing look, and his silence troubles me. Although he is no longer young, I am astonished at the suppleness and elasticity of his movements; the undulations of his loins are reptilian. Let me describe him in greater detail. His stiff, grizzled hair, his low forehead, his oblique eyes, his prominent cheek-bones, his broad, strong jaw, and his long, fleshy, turned-up chin, give him a strange character that I cannot define. Is he a simpleton? Is he a rascal? I cannot tell. Yet it is curious that this man holds my attention as he does. After a time this obsession lessens and disappears. And I realize that this is simply another of the thousands and thousands of tricks of my excessive, magnifying, and romantic imagination, which causes me to see things and people as too beautiful or as too ugly, and which compels me to make of this miserable Joseph a being superior to the stupid countryman, to the heavy peasant that he really is.

Towards the end of the dinner, Joseph, still without saying a word, took from his apron-pocket the "Libre Parole," and began to read it attentively, and Marianne, softened by having drunk two full decanters of cider, became more amiable. Sprawling on her chair, her sleeves rolled up and revealing bare arms, her cap set a little awry upon her uncombed hair, she asked me where I came from, where I had been, if I had had good places, and if I was against the Jews. And we talked for some time, in an almost friendly way. In my turn I asked her for information concerning the house, whether many people came and what sort of people, whether Monsieur was attentive to the chambermaids, whether Madame had a lover.

Oh! but you should have seen her head, and that of Joseph, too, whose reading was suddenly interrupted, now and then, by my questions. How scandalized and ridiculous they were! You have no idea how far behind the times they are in the country. They know nothing, they see nothing, they understand nothing; the most natural thing abashes them. And yet, he with his awkward respectability, she with her virtuous disorder,-nothing will get it out of my mind that they are intimate. Oh! indeed, one must really be in a bad way to be satisfied with a type like that.

"It is easy to see that you come from Paris, from I know not where," remarked the cook, in a tone of bitter reproach.

Whereupon Joseph, with a toss of his head, curtly added:

"Sure."

And he began to read the "Libre Parole" again. Marianne rose heavily, and took the kettle from the fire. We talked no more.

Then I thought of my last place, of Monsieur Jean, the valet, so distinguished with his black side-whiskers and his white skin, for which he cared as if he were a woman. Ah! he was such a handsome fellow, Monsieur Jean, so gay, so nice, so delicate, so artful, when at night he read aloud to us from the "Fin de Siècle" or told us salacious and touching stories, or familiarized us with the contents of Monsieur's letters. Things have changed to-day. How did I ever come to get stranded here, among such people, and far from everything that I like?

I almost want to cry.

* * *

And I am writing these lines in my chamber, a dirty little chamber, at the top of the house, open to all winds, to the winter's cold, to the summer's burning heat. No other furniture than a paltry iron bed and a paltry white-wood wardrobe which does not close and where I have not room enough to arrange my things. No other light than a tallow candle that smokes and runs down into a brass candlestick. It is pitiful. If I wish to continue to write this diary, or even to read the novels that I have brought, or to tell my fortune with the cards, I shall have to buy wax candles with my own money, for, as for Madame's wax candles,-nit! as Monsieur Jean would say,-they are under lock and key.

To-morrow I will try to get a little settled. Over my bed I will nail my little gilt crucifix, and on the mantel I will place my painted porcelain virgin, together with my little boxes, my bric-à-brac, and the photographs of Monsieur Jean, so as to penetrate this hole with a ray of privacy and joy.

Marianne's room is next to mine. A thin partition separates us, and you can hear everything that goes on. I thought that Joseph, who sleeps in the out-buildings, might visit Marianne to-night. But no. For a long time Marianne turned about in her room, coughing, hawking, dragging chairs, moving a heap of things. Now she is snoring. It is doubtless in the day-time that they have their clandestine meetings.

A dog barks, far away, in the country. It is nearly two o'clock, and my light is going out. I, too, am obliged to go to bed. But I feel that I shall not sleep.

Ah! how old I shall grow in this hovel! Yes, indeed!

* * *

September 15.

I have not yet written a single time the name of my masters. It is a ridiculous and comical name: Lanlaire; Monsieur and Madame Lanlaire. You see at once the plays that can be made on such a name, and the jokes to which it is bound to give rise. As for their Christian names, they are, perhaps, more ridiculous than their surname, and, if I may say so, they complete it. That of Monsieur is Isidore; that of Madame, Euphrasie. Euphrasie! Think of it!

I have just been to the haberdasher's to match some silk. And the woman who keeps the shop has given me some information as to the house. It is not delightful. But, to be just, I must say that I have never met such a chattering jade. If the dealers of whom my masters buy speak in this way of them, what must be said of them by those whom they do not patronize? My! but they have good tongues in the country.

Monsieur's father was a manufacturer of cloths, and a banker, at Louviers. He went into a fraudulent bankruptcy that emptied all the little purses of the region, and was condemned to ten years' imprisonment, which, in view of the forgeries, abuses of confidence, thefts, and crimes of all sorts, that he had committed, was deemed a very light sentence. While he was serving his time at Gaillon, he died. But he had taken care to put aside, and in a safe place, it seems, four hundred and fifty thousand francs, which, artfully withheld from the ruined creditors, constitute Monsieur's entire personal fortune. Ah! you see, it is no trick at all to be rich.

Madame's father was much worse, although he was never sentenced to imprisonment, and departed this life respected by all the respectable people. He was a dealer in men. The haberdasher explained to me that, under Napoleon III, when everybody was not obliged to serve in the army, as is the case to-day, the rich young men who were drawn by lot for service had the right to send a substitute. They applied to an agency or to a Monsieur who, in consideration of a premium varying from one to two thousand francs, according to the risks at the time, found them a poor devil, who consented to take their place in the regiment for seven years, and, in case of war, to die for them. Thus was carried on in France the trade in whites, as in Africa the trade in blacks. There were men-markets, like cattle-markets, but for a more horrible butchery. That does not greatly astonish me. Are there, then, none to-day? What, I should like to know, are the employment-bureaus and the public houses, if not slave-fairs, butcher-shops for the sale of human meat?

According to the haberdasher, it was a very lucrative business, and Madame's father, who had a monopoly of it for the entire department, showed great skill in it,-that is to say, he kept for himself and put in his pocket the larger part of the premium. Ten years ago he died, mayor of Mesnil-Roy, substitute justice of the peace, councillor-general, president of the board of vestrymen, treasurer of the charity bureau, decorated, and leaving, in addition to the Priory, which he had bought for nothing, twelve hundred thousand francs, of which six hundred thousand went to Madame,-for Madame has a brother who has gone to the bad, and they do not know what has become of him. Well, say what you will, that is money that can hardly be called clean, if, indeed, there be any clean money. For my part, it is very simple; I have seen nothing but dirty money and wicked wealth.

The Lanlaires-is it not enough to disgust you?-have, then, more then a million. They do nothing but economize, and they spend hardly a third of their income. Curtailing everything, depriving others and themselves, haggling bitterly over bills, denying their words, recognizing no agreements save those that are written and signed, one must keep an eye on them, and in business affairs never open the door for any dispute whatever. They immediately take advantage of it, to avoid payment, especially with the little dealers who cannot afford the costs of a lawsuit, and the poor devils who are defenceless. Naturally, they never give anything, except from time to time to the church, for they are very pious. As for the poor, they may die of hunger before the door of the Priory, imploring and wailing. The door remains always closed.

"I even believe," said the haberdasher, "that, if they could take something from the beggar's sack, they would do it remorselessly, with a savage joy."

And she added, by way of a monstrous example:

"All of us here who earn our living with difficulty, when giving hallowed bread, buy cake for the purpose. It is a point of propriety and pride. They, the dirty misers, they distribute,-what? Bread, my dear young woman. And not first-class bread at that, not even white bread. No, workman's bread. Is it not shameful,-people as rich as they are? Why, one day the wife of Paumier, the cooper, heard Madame Lanlaire say to the priest, who was mildly reproaching her for this avarice: 'Monsieur le curé, that is always good enough for these people.'"

One must be just, even with his masters. Though there is only one voice in regard to Madame, they have nothing against Monsieur. They do not detest Monsieur. All agree in declaring that Monsieur is not proud, that he would be generous to people, and would do much good, if he could. The trouble is that he cannot. Monsieur is nothing in his own house,-less than the servants, badly treated as they are, less than the cat, to whom everything is allowed. Little by little, and for the sake of tranquillity, he has abrogated all his authority as master of the house, all his dignity as a man, into the hands of his wife. Madame directs, regulates, organizes, administers everything. Madame attends to the stable, to the yard, to the garden, to the cellar, and to the wood-house, and is sure to find something amiss everywhere. Never do things go to her liking, and she continually pretends that they are being robbed. What an eye she has! It is inconceivable. They play her no tricks, be sure, for she knows them all. She pays the bills, collects the dividends and rents, and makes the bargains. She has the devices of an old bookkeeper, the indelicacies of a corrupt process-server, the ingenious strategy of a usurer. It is incredible. Of course, she holds the purse, and ferociously; and she never loosens the strings, except to let in more money. She leaves Monsieur without a sou; the poor man has hardly enough to buy his tobacco. In the midst of his wealth, he is even more destitute than the rest of us here. However, he does not balk; he never balks. He obeys like the comrades. Oh! how queer he is at times, with his air of a tired and submissive dog! When, Madame being out, there comes a dealer with a bill, a poor man with his poverty, a messenger who wants a tip, you ought to see Monsieur. Monsieur is really a comical sight. He fumbles in his pockets, gropes about, blushes, apologizes, and says, with a sorrowful face:

"Why, I have no change about me. I have only thousand-franc bills. Have you change for a thousand francs? No? Then you will have to call again."

Thousand-franc bills, he, who never has a hundred sous about him. Even his letter-paper Madame keeps locked in a closet, of which she holds the key, and she gives it out to him sheet by sheet, grumbling:

"Thank you, but you use a tremendous amount of paper. To whom, then, can you be writing that you use so much?"

The only thing that they reproach him with, the only thing that they do not understand, is the undignified weakness in consequence of which he allows himself to be led in this way by such a shrew. For no one is ignorant of the fact-indeed, Madame shouts it from the house-top-that Monsieur and Madame are no longer anything to each other. Madame, who has some internal disease and can have no children, will not allow him to approach her.

"Then," asked the haberdasher, in finishing her conversation, "why is Monsieur so good and so cowardly toward a woman who denies him not only money, but pleasure? I would bring him to his senses, and rudely, too."

And this is what happens. When Monsieur, who is a vigorous man, and who is also a kindly man, wishes to enjoy himself away from home, or to bestow a little charity upon a poor man, he is reduced to ridiculous expedients, to clumsy excuses, to not very dignified loans, the discovery of which by Madame brings on terrible scenes,-quarrels that often last for months. Then Monsieur is seen going off through the fields, walking, walking, like a madman, making furious and threatening gestures, crushing the turf beneath his feet, talking to himself, in the wind, in the rain, in the snow; and then coming back at night more timid, more bowed, more trembling, more conquered than ever.

The curious, and also the melancholy, part of the matter is that, amid the worst recriminations of the haberdasher, among these unveiled infamies, this shameful vileness, which is hawked from mouth to mouth, from shop to shop, from house to house, it is evident that the jealousy of the town's-people toward the Lanlaires is even greater than their contempt for them. In spite of their criminal uselessness, of their social wrong-doing, in spite of all that they crush under the weight of their hideous million, this million none the less surrounds them with a halo of respectability, and almost of glory. The people bow lower to them than to others, and receive them more warmly than others. They call-with what fawning civility!-the dirty hovel in which they live in the filth of their soul, the chateau. To strangers coming to inquire concerning the curiosities of the region I am sure that the haberdasher herself, hateful though she is, would answer:

"We have a beautiful church, a beautiful fountain, and, above all, we have something else very beautiful,-the Lanlaires, who possess a million and live in a chateau. They are frightful people, and we are very proud of them."

The worship of the million! It is a low sentiment, common not only to the bourgeois, but to most of us also,-the little, the humble, the penniless of this world. And I myself, with my frank ways and my threats to break everything, even I am not free from this. I, whom wealth oppresses; I, who owe to it my sorrows, my vices, my hatreds, the bitterest of my humiliations, and my impossible dreams, and the perpetual torment of my life,-well, as soon as I find myself in presence of a rich man, I cannot help looking upon him as an exceptional and beautiful being, as a sort of marvellous divinity, and, in spite of myself, surmounting my will and my reason, I feel rising, from the depths of my being, toward this rich man, who is very often an imbecile, and sometimes a murderer, something like an incense of admiration. Is it not stupid? And why? Why?

On leaving this dirty haberdasher, and this strange shop, where, by the way, it was impossible for me to match my silk, I reflected with discouragement upon all that this woman had told me about my masters. It was drizzling. The sky was as dirty as the soul of this dealer in pinchbeck. I slipped along the slimy pavement of the street, and, furious against the haberdasher and against my masters, and against myself, furious against this country sky, against this mud, in which my heart and my feet were splashing, against the incurable sadness of the little town, I kept on repeating to myself:

"Well, here is a clean place for you! I had seen everything but this. A nice hole I have fallen into!"

* * *

Ah! yes, a nice hole indeed! And here is something more.

Madame dresses herself all alone, and does her own hair. She locks herself securely in her dressing-room, and it is with difficulty that I can obtain an entrance. God knows what she does in there for hours and hours! This evening, unable to restrain myself, I knocked at the door squarely. And here is the little conversation that ensued between Madame and myself:

"Tac, tac!"

"Who is there?"

Ah! that sharp, shrill voice, which one would like to force back into her throat with one's fist!

"It is I, Madame."

"What do you want?"

"I come to do the dressing-room."

"It is done. Go away. And come only when I ring for you."

That is to say that I am not even the chambermaid here. I do not know what I am here, and what my duties are. And yet, to dress and undress my mistresses and to do their hair is the only part of my work that I like. I like to play with night-gowns, with dresses and ribbons, to dabble among the linens, the hats, the laces, the furs, to rub my mistresses after the bath, to powder them, to rub their feet with pumice-stone, to perfume their breasts, to oxygenize their hair, to know them, in short, from the tips of their slippers to the peak of their chignon, to see them all naked. In this way they become for you something else than a mistress, almost a friend or an accomplice, often a slave. One inevitably becomes the confidant of a heap of things, of their pains, of their vices, of their disappointments in love, of the inner secrets of the household, of their diseases. To say nothing of the fact that, when one is adroit, one holds them by a multitude of details which they do not even suspect. One gets much more out of them. It is at once profitable and amusing. That is how I understand the work of a chambermaid.

You cannot imagine how many there are-how shall I say that?-how many there are who are indecent and lewd in their privacy, even among those who, in society, pass for the most reserved and the most strict, and whose virtue is supposed to be unassailable. Ah! in the dressing-rooms how the masks fall! How the proudest fronts crack and crumble!

* * *

Well, what am I going to do here? In this country hole, with an impertinent minx like my new mistress, I have no favors to dream of, no distractions to hope for. I shall do stupid housework, wearisome sewing, and nothing else. Ah! when I remember the places where I have served, that makes my situation still sadder, more intolerably sad. And I have a great desire to go away,-to make my bow once for all to this country of savages.

* * *

Just now I met Monsieur on the stairs. He was starting for a hunt. Monsieur looked at me with a salacious air. Again he asked me:

"Well, Célestine, are you getting accustomed to the place?"

Decidedly, it is a mania with him. I answered:

"I do not know yet, Monsieur."

Then, with effrontery:

"And Monsieur, is he getting accustomed here?"

Monsieur burst out laughing. Monsieur takes a joke well. Monsieur is really good-natured.

"You must get accustomed, Célestine. You must get accustomed. Sapristi!"

I was in a humor for boldness. Again I answered:

"I will try, Monsieur,-with Monsieur's aid."

I think that Monsieur was going to say something very stiff to me. His eyes shone like two coals. But Madame appeared at the top of the stairs. Monsieur was off in his direction, I in mine. It was a pity.

This evening, through the door of the salon, I heard Madame saying to Monsieur, in the amiable tone that you can imagine:

"I wish no familiarity with my servants."

Her servants? Are not Madame's servants Monsieur's servants? Well, indeed!

* * *

September 18.

This morning (Sunday) I went to mass.

I have already declared that, without being pious, I have religion all the same. Say and do what you like, religion is always religion. The rich, perhaps, can get along without it, but it is necessary for people like us. I know very well that there are individuals who make use of it in a rather queer fashion,-that many priests and good sisters scarcely do it honor. But never mind. When one is unhappy,-and, in our calling, we get more than our share of unhappiness,-it is the only thing that will soothe you. Only that, and love. Yes, but love, that is another sort of consolation. Consequently, even in impious houses, I never missed mass. In the first place, mass is an excursion, a distraction, time gained from the daily ennui of the household. And, above all, we meet comrades, hear stories, and form acquaintances. Ah! if, on going out of the chapel of the Assumptionists, I had wished to listen to the good-looking old gentlemen who whispered psalms of a curious sort in my ears, perhaps I should not be here to-day.

To-day the weather is improved. There is a beautiful sun,-one of those misty suns that make walking agreeable and sadness less burdensome. I know not why, but, under the influence of this blue and gold morning, I have something like gaiety in my heart.

We are about a mile from the church. The way leading to it is a pleasant one,-a little path winding between hedges. In spring it must be full of flowers, wild cherry trees, and the hawthorns that smell so good. I love the hawthorns. They remind me of things when I was a little girl. Otherwise the country is like the country everywhere else; there is nothing astonishing about it. It is a very wide valley, and then, yonder, at the end of the valley, there are hills. In the valley there is a river, on the hills there is a forest; all covered with a veil of fog, transparent and gilded, which hides the landscape too much to suit me.

Oddly enough, I keep my fidelity to nature as it is in Brittany. I have it in my blood. Nowhere else does it seem to me as beautiful; nowhere else does it speak better to my soul. Even among the richest and most fertile fields of Normandy I am homesick for the moors, and for that tragic and splendid sea where I was born. And this recollection, suddenly called up, casts a cloud of melancholy into the gaiety of this delightful morning.

On the way I meet women and women. With prayer-books under their arms, they, too, are going to mass,-cooks, chambermaids, and barn-yard scullions, thick-set and clumsy, and with the slow and swaying gait of animals. How queerly they are rigged out, in their holiday garb,-perfect mops. They smell powerfully of the country, and it is easy to see that they have not served in Paris. They look at me with curiosity,-a curiosity at once distrustful and sympathetic. They note enviously, in detail, my hat, my closely-fitting gown, my little baize jacket, and my umbrella rolled in its green silk cover. My costume-that of a lady-astonishes them, and especially, I think, my coquettish and smart way of wearing it. They nudge each other with their elbows, make enormous eyes, and open their mouths immoderately, to show each other my luxury and my style. And I go tripping along, nimbly and lightly, with my pointed shoes, and boldly lifting up my dress, which makes a sound of rustling silk against the skirts beneath. What can you expect? For my part, I am glad to be admired.

As they pass by me, I hear them say to each other, in a whisper:

"That is the new chambermaid at the Priory."

One of them, short, fat, red-faced, asthmatic, and who seems to have great difficulty in carrying an immense paunch on legs widely spread apart, undoubtedly to the better steady it, approaches me with a smile, a thick, glutinous smile on her gluttonous lips:

"You are the new chambermaid at the Priory? Your name is Célestine? You arrived from Paris four days ago?"

She knows everything already. She is familiar with everything, and with me. And there is nothing about this paunchy body, about this walking goatskin, that so amuses me as the musketeer hat,-a large, black, felt hat, whose plumes sway in the breeze.

She continues:

"My name is Rose, Mam'zelle Rose; I am at M. Mauger's, the next place to yours; he is a former captain. Perhaps you have already seen him?"

"No, Mademoiselle."

"You might have seen him over the hedge that separates the two estates. He is always working in the garden. He is still a fine man, you know."

We walk more slowly, for Mam'zelle Rose is almost stifling. She wheezes like a foundered mare. With every breath her chest expands and contracts, then to expand again. She says, chopping her words:

"I have one of my attacks. Oh! how people suffer these days! It is incredible."

Then, between wheezes and hiccoughs, she encourages me:

"You must come and see me, my little one. If you need anything, good advice, no matter what, do not hesitate. I am fond of young people. We will drink a little glass of peach brandy as we talk. Many of these young women come to our house."

She stops a moment, takes breath, and then, in a lower voice and a confidential tone, continues:

"And, say, Mademoiselle Célestine, if you wish to have your letters addressed in our care, it would be more prudent. A bit of good advice that I give you. Madame Lanlaire reads the letters, all the letters. Once she came very near being sentenced for it by the justice of the peace. I repeat, do not hesitate."

I thank her, and we continue to walk. Although her body pitches and rolls like an old vessel in a heavy sea, Mademoiselle Rose seems now to breathe more easily. And we go on, gossiping:

"Oh! it will be a change for you here, surely. In the first place, my little one, at the Priory they never keep a chambermaid for any length of time. That is a settled matter. When Madame does not discharge them, Monsieur gets them into trouble. A terrible man, Monsieur Lanlaire. The pretty, the ugly, the young, the old,-all are alike to him. Oh! the house is well known. And everybody will tell you what I tell you. You are ill-fed there; you have no liberty; you are crushed with work. And chiding and scolding all the time. A real hell! One needs only to see you, pretty and well brought up as you are, to know, beyond a doubt, that you are not made to stay with such curmudgeons."

All that the haberdasher told me, Mademoiselle Rose tells me again, with more disagreeable variations. So violent is this woman's passion for chattering that she finally forgets her suffering. Her malice gets the better of her asthma. And the scandal of the house goes its course, mingled with the private affairs of the neighborhood. Although already I know them all, Rose's stories are so black, and her words are so discouraging, that again I am thoroughly saddened. I ask myself if I had not better go away at once. Why try an experiment in which I am conquered in advance?

Other women have overtaken us, curious, nosy, accompanying with an energetic "For sure" each of the revelations of Rose, who, less and less winded, continues to jabber:

"M. Mauger is a very good man, and all alone, my little one. As much as to say that I am the mistress. Why! a former captain; it is natural, isn't it? He is no manager; he knows nothing of household affairs; he likes to be taken care of and coddled, have his linen well kept, his caprices respected, nice dishes prepared for him. If he had not beside him a person in whom he had confidence, he would be plundered right and left. My God, there is no lack of thieves here!"

The intonation of her spasmodic utterances, and her winks, clearly revealed to me her exact situation in Captain Mauger's house.

"Why, you know, a man all alone, and who still has ideas. And besides, there is work to do all the same. And we are going to hire a boy to assist."

This Rose is lucky, I, too, have often dreamed of entering an old man's service. It is disgusting. But at least one is tranquil, and has a future.

We traverse the entire district. Oh! indeed, it is not pretty. It in no way resembles the Boulevard Malesherbes. Dirty, narrow, winding streets, and houses that stand neither square or straight,-dark houses, of old, rotten wood, with high, tottering gables, and bulging stories that project one past the other, in the olden fashion. The people who pass are ugly, ugly, and I have not seen a single handsome fellow. The industry of the neighborhood is the manufacture of list-shoes. Most of the shoemakers, having been unable to deliver a week's product at the factory, are still at work. And behind the window-panes I see poor sickly faces, bent backs, and black hands hammering leather soles.

That adds still further to the dismal sadness of the place. It seems like a prison.

But here is the haberdasher, who, standing at her threshold, smiles at us and bows.

"You are going to eight o'clock mass? I went to seven o'clock mass. You have plenty of time. Will you not come in, a moment?"

Rose thanks her. She warns me against the haberdasher, who is a malicious woman and speaks ill of everybody, a real pest! Then she begins again to boast of her master's virtues and of her easy place. I ask her:

"Then the captain has no family?"

"No family?" she cries, scandalized. "Well, my little one, you are not on. Oh! yes, there is a family, and a nice one, indeed! Heaps of nieces and cousins,-loafers, penniless people, hangers-on, all of whom were plundering him and robbing him. You should have seen that. It was an abomination. So you can imagine whether I set that right,--whether I cleared the house of all this vermin. Why, my dear young woman, but for me, the captain now would be on his uppers. Ah! the poor man! He is well satisfied with the way things are now."

I insist with an ironical intention, which, however, she does not understand:

"And, undoubtedly, Mademoiselle Rose, he will remember you in his will?"

Prudently, she replies:

"Monsieur will do as he likes. He is free. Surely I do not influence him. I ask nothing of him. I do not ask him even to pay me wages. I stay with him out of devotion. But he knows life. He knows those who love him, who care for him with disinterestedness, who coddle him. No one need think that he is stupid as certain persons pretend,-Madame Lanlaire at the head, who says things about us. It is she, on the contrary, who is evil-minded, Mademoiselle Célestine, and who has a will of her own. Depend upon it!"

Upon this eloquent apology for the captain, we arrive at the church.

The fat Rose does not leave me. She obliges me to take a chair near hers, and begins to mumble prayers, to make genuflections and signs of the cross. Oh! this church! With its rough timbers that cross it and sustain the staggering vault, it resembles a barn; with the people in it, coughing, hawking, running against benches, and dragging chairs around, it seems also like a village wine-shop. I see nothing but faces stupefied by ignorance, bitter mouths contracted by hatred. There are none here but wretched creatures who come to ask God to do something against somebody. It is impossible for me to concentrate my thoughts, and I feel a sort of cold penetrating me and surrounding me. Perhaps it is because there is not even an organ in this church. Queer, isn't it? but I cannot pray without an organ. An anthem on the organ fills my chest, and then my stomach; it completely restores me, like love. If I could always hear the strains of an organ, I really believe that I should never sin. Here, instead of an organ, there is an old woman, in the choir, with blue spectacles, and a poor little black shawl over her shoulders, who painfully drums on a sort of piano, wheezy and out of tune. And the people are always coughing and hawking, the droning of the priest and the responses of the choristers being drowned by a sound of catarrh. And how bad it all smells,-mingled odors of the muck-heap, of the stable, of the soil, of sour straw, of wet leather, of damaged incense. Really, they are very ill-bred in the country.

The mass drags along, and I grow weary. I am especially vexed at finding myself among people so ordinary and so ugly, and who pay so little attention to me. Not a pretty spectacle, not a pretty costume with which to rest my thought or cheer my eyes. Never did I better understand that I am made for the joy of elegance and style. Instead of being lifted up, as at mass in Paris, all my senses take offence, and rebel at once. For distraction, I follow attentively the movements of the officiating priest. Oh! thank you! he is a sort of tall, jovial fellow, very young, with an ordinary face, and a brick-red complexion. With his dishevelled hair, his greedy jaw, his gluttonous lips, his obscene little eyes, and his eyelids circled with black, I have sized him up at once. How he must enjoy himself at the table! And at the confessional, too,-the dirty things that he must say! Rose, perceiving that I am watching him, bends toward me, and says, in a very low voice:

"That is the new vicar. I recommend him to you. There is no one like him to confess the women. The curate is a holy man, certainly, but he is looked upon as too strict. Whereas the new vicar...."

She clacks her tongue, and goes back to her prayer, her head bent over the prie-Dieu.

Well, he would not please me, the new vicar; he has a dirty and brutal air; he looks more like a ploughman than a priest. For my part, I require delicacy, poetry, the beyond, and white hands. I like men to be gentle and chic, as Monsieur Jean was.

After mass Rose drags me to the grocery store. With a few mysterious words she explains to me that it is necessary to be on good terms with the woman who keeps it, and that all the domestics pay her assiduous court.

Another little dump,-decidedly, this is the country of fat women. Her face is covered with freckles, and, through her thin, light, flaxen hair, which is lacking in gloss, can be seen portions of her skull, on top of which a chignon stands up in a ridiculous fashion, like a little broom. At the slightest movement her breast, beneath her brown cloth waist, shakes like a liquid in a bottle. Her eyes, bordered with red circles, are bloodshot, and her ignoble mouth makes of her every smile a grimace. Rose introduces me:

"Madame Gouin, I bring you the new chambermaid at the Priory."

The grocer observes me attentively, and I notice that her eyes fasten themselves upon my waist with an embarrassing obstinacy. She says in a meaningless voice:

"Mademoiselle is at home here. Mademoiselle is a pretty girl. Mademoiselle is a Parisienne, undoubtedly?"

"It is true, Madame Gouin, I come from Paris."

"That is to be seen; that is to be seen directly. One need not look at you twice. I am very fond of the Parisiennes; they know what it is to live. I too served in Paris, when I was young. I served in the house of a midwife in the Rue Guénégaud,-Madame Tripier. Perhaps you know her?"

"No."

"That makes no difference. Oh! it was a long time ago. But come in, Mademoiselle Célestine."

She escorts us, with ceremony, into the back shop, where four other domestics are already gathered about a round table.

"Oh! you will have an anxious time of it, my poor young woman," groaned the grocer, as she offered me a chair. "It is not because they do not patronize me at the chateau; but I can truly say that it is an infernal house, infernal! Is it not so, Mesdemoiselles?"

"For sure!" answer in chorus, with like gestures and like grimaces, the four domestics thus appealed to.

Madame Gouin continues:

"Oh! thank you, I would not like to sell to people who are continually haggling, and crying out, like pole-cats, that they are being robbed, that they are being injured. They may go where they like."

The chorus of servants responds:

"Surely they may go where they like."

To which Madame Gouin, addressing Rose more particularly, adds, in a firm tone:

"They do not run after them, do they, Mam'zelle Rose? Thank God! we have no need of them, do we?"

Rose contents herself with a shrug of her shoulders, putting into this gesture all the concentrated gall, spite, and contempt at her command. And the huge musketeer hat emphasizes the energy of these violent sentiments by the disorderly swaying of its black plumes.

Then, after a silence:

"Oh! well, let us talk no more about these people. Every time that I speak of them it turns my stomach."

Thereupon the stories and gossip begin again. An uninterrupted flow of filth is vomited from these sad mouths, as from a sewer. The back-shop seems infected with it. The impression is the more disagreeable because the room is rather dark and the faces take on fantastic deformities. It is lighted only by a narrow window opening on a damp and filthy court,-a sort of shaft formed by moss-eaten walls. An odor of pickle, of rotting vegetables, of red herring, persists around us, impregnating our garments. It is intolerable. Then each of these creatures, heaped up on their chairs like bundles of dirty linen, plunges into the narration of some dirty action, some scandal, some crime. Coward that I am, I try to smile with them, to applaud with them; but I feel something insurmountable, something like frightful disgust. A nausea turns my stomach, forces its way to my throat, leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and presses my temples. I should like to go away. I cannot, and I remain there, like an idiot, heaped up like them on my chair, making the same gestures that they make,-I remain there, stupidly listening to these shrill voices that sound to me like dish-water gurgling and dripping through sinks and pipes.

I know very well that we have to defend ourselves against our masters, and I am not the last to do it, I assure you. But no; here, all the same, that passes imagination. These women are odious to me. I detest them, and I say to myself, in a low voice, that I have nothing in common with them. Education, contact with stylish people, the habit of seeing beautiful things, the reading of Paul Bourget's novels, have saved me from these turpitudes. Ah! the pretty and amusing monkey-tricks of the servants' halls in Paris,-they are far away!

As we are leaving, the grocer says to me, with an amiable smile:

"Pay no attention to the fact that your masters do not patronize me; you must come and see me again."

I go back with Rose, who finishes familiarizing me with the daily doings of the neighborhood. I had supposed that her stock of infamies was exhausted. Not at all. She discovers and invents new and more frightful ones. In the matter of calumny her resources are infinite. And her tongue goes on forever, without stopping. It does not forget anybody or anything. It is astonishing how, in a few minutes, one can dishonor people, in the country. Thus she escorts me back to the Priory gate. Even there she cannot make up her mind to leave me; talks on, talks incessantly, tries to envelop and stun me with her friendship and devotion. As for me, my head is broken by all that I have heard, and the sight of the Priory fills me with a feeling of discouragement. Ah! these broad, flowerless lawns! And this immense building, that has the air of a barrack or a prison, and where, from behind each window, a pair of eyes seems to be spying you.

The sun is warmer, the fog has disappeared, and the view of the landscape has become clearer. Beyond the plain, on the hills, I perceive little villages, gilded by the light, and enlivened by red roofs. The river running through the plain, yellow and green, shines here and there in silvery curves. And a few clouds decorate the sky with their light and charming frescoes. But I take no pleasure in the contemplation of all this. I have now but one desire, one will, one obsession,-to flee from this sun, from this plain, from these hills, from this house, and from this fat woman, whose malicious voice hurts and tortures me.

At last she gets ready to leave me, takes my hand, and presses it affectionately in her fat fingers gloved with mittens. She says to me:

"And then, my little one, Madame Gouin, you know, is a very amiable and very clever woman. You must go to see her often."

She lingers longer, and adds more mysteriously:

"She has relieved many young girls. As soon as they are in any trouble, they go to her. Neither seen or known. One can trust her, take my word for it. She is a very, very expert woman."

With eyes more brilliant, and fastening her gaze on me with a strange tenacity, she repeats:

"Very expert, and clever, and discreet. She is the Providence of the neighborhood. Now, my little one, do not forget to come to see us when you can. And go often to Madame Gouin's. You will not regret it. We will see each other soon again."

She has gone. I see her, with her rolling gait, moving away, skirting first the wall and then the hedge with her enormous person, and suddenly burying herself in a road, where she disappears.

* * *

I pass by Joseph, the gardener-coachman, who is raking the paths. I think that he is going to speak to me; he does not speak to me. He simply looks at me obliquely, with a singular expression that almost frightens me.

"Fine weather this morning, Monsieur Joseph."

Joseph grunts I know not what between his teeth. He is furious that I have allowed myself to walk in the path that he is raking.

What a queer man he is, and how ill-bred! And why does he never say a word to me? And why does he never answer when I speak to him?

* * *

In the house I find Madame by no means contented. She gives me a very disagreeable reception, treats me very roughly:

"I beg you not to stay out so long in future."

I desire to reply, for I am vexed, irritated, unnerved. But fortunately I restrain myself. I confine myself to muttering a little.

"What's that you say?"

"I say nothing."

"It is lucky. And furthermore, I forbid you to walk with M. Mauger's servant. She is very bad company for you. See, everything is late this morning, because of you."

I say to myself:

"Zut! zut! and zut! You make me tired. I will speak to whom I like. I will see anyone that it pleases me to see. You shall lay down no law for me, camel!"

I need only to see once more her wicked eyes, and hear her shrill voice and her tyrannical orders, in order to lose at once the bad impression, the impression of disgust, that I brought back from the mass, from the grocer, and from Rose. Rose and the grocer are right; the haberdasher also is right; all of them are right. And I promise myself that I will see Rose; that I will see her often; that I will return to the grocer's; that I will make this dirty haberdasher my best friend,-since Madame forbids me to do so. And I repeat internally, with savage energy:

"Camel! Camel! Camel!"

But I would have been much more relieved if I had had the courage to hurl and shout this insult full in her face.

* * *

During the day, after lunch, Monsieur and Madame went out driving. The dressing-room, the chambers, Monsieur's desk, all the closets, all the cupboards, all the sideboards, were locked. What did I tell you? Ah, well, thank you! no means of reading a letter, or of making up any little packages.

So I have remained in my room. I have written to my mother and to Monsieur Jean, and I have read "En Famille." What a delightful book! And how well written! It is queer, all the same; I am very fond of hearing dirty things, but I do not like to read them. I like only the books that make me cry.

* * *

For dinner they had boiled beef and broth. It seemed to me that Monsieur and Madame were very cool toward each other. Monsieur read the "Petit Journal" with provoking ostentation. He crumpled the paper, rolling all the time his kind, comical, gentle eyes. Even when he is in anger, Monsieur's eyes remain gentle and timid. At last, doubtless to start the conversation, Monsieur, with his nose still buried in his paper, exclaimed:

"Hello! another woman cut to pieces!"

Madame made no answer. Very stiff, very straight, austere in her black silk dress, her forehead wrinkled, her look stern, she did not cease her dreaming. About what?

It is, perhaps, because of me that Madame is sulky with Monsieur.

* * *