A Chambermaid's Diary. Octave Mirbeau
"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
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