_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 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!_"