A Chambermaid's Diary. Octave Mirbeau

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 château; but I can truly say that it is an infernal house, infernal! Is it not so, Mesdemoiselles?"

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