A Chambermaid's Diary. Octave Mirbeau

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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 château. 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 château. 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!

III

СКАЧАТЬ