"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?