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 have one of my attacks. Oh! how people suffer these days! It is

incredible."

Then, between wheezes and hiccoughs, she encourages me:

"You must come and see me, my little one. If you need anything, good

advice, no matter what, do not hesitate. I am fond of young people.

We will drink a little glass of peach brandy as we talk. Many of these

young women come to our house."

She stops a moment, takes breath, and then, in a lower voice and a

confidential tone, continues:

"And, say, Mademoiselle Célestine, if you wish to have your letters

addressed in our care, it would be more prudent. A bit of good advice

that I give you. Madame Lanlaire reads the letters, all the letters.

Once she came very near being sentenced for it by the justice of the

peace. I repeat, do not hesitate."

I thank her, and we continue to walk. Although her body pitches and

rolls like an old vessel in a heavy sea, Mademoiselle Rose seems now to

breathe more easily. And we go on, gossiping:

"Oh! it will be a change for you here, surely. In the first place, my

little one, at the Priory they never keep a chambermaid for any length

of time. That is a settled matter. When Madame does not discharge them,

Monsieur gets them into trouble. A terrible man, Monsieur Lanlaire. The

pretty, the ugly, the young, the old,--all are alike to him. Oh! the

house is well known. And everybody will tell you what I tell you. You

are ill-fed there; you have no liberty; you are crushed with work. And

chiding and scolding all the time. A real hell! One needs only to see

you, pretty and well brought up as you are, to know, beyond a doubt,

that you are not made to stay with such curmudgeons."

All that the haberdasher told me, Mademoiselle Rose tells me again,

with more disagreeable variations. So violent is this woman's passion

for chattering that she finally forgets her suffering. Her malice gets

the better of her asthma. And the scandal of the house goes its course,

mingled with the private affairs of the neighborhood. Although already

I know them all, Rose's stories are so black, and her words are so

discouraging, that again I am thoroughly saddened. I ask myself if I

had not better go away at once. Why try an experiment in which I am

conquered in advance?

Other women have overtaken us, curious, nosy, accompanying with an

energetic "For sure" each of the revelations of Rose, who, less and

less winded, continues to jabber:

"M. Mauger is a very good man, and all alone, my little one. As much as

to say that I am the mistress. Why! a former captain; it is natural,

isn't it? He is no manager; he knows nothing of household affairs; he

likes to be taken care of and coddled, have his linen well kept, his

caprices respected, nice dishes prepared for him. If he had not beside

him a person in whom he had confidence, he would be plundered right and

left. My God, there is no lack of thieves here!"

The intonation of her spasmodic utterances, and her winks, clearly

revealed to me her exact situation 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?"

"For sure!" answer in chorus, with like gestures and like grimaces, the

four domestics thus appealed to.

Madame Gouin continues:

"Oh! thank you, I would not like to sell to people who are continually

haggling, and crying out, like pole-cats, that they are being robbed,

that they are being injured. They may go where they like."

The chorus of servants responds:

"Surely they may go where they like."

To which Madame Gouin, addressing Rose more particularly, adds, in a

firm tone:

"They do not run after them, do they, Mam'zelle Rose? Thank God! we

have no need of them, do we?"

Rose contents herself with a shrug of her shoulders, putting into this

gesture all the concentrated gall, spite, and contempt at her command.

And the huge musketeer hat emphasizes the energy of these violent

sentiments by the disorderly swaying of its black plumes.

Then, after a silence:

"Oh! well, let us talk no more about these people. Every time that I

speak of them it turns my stomach."

Thereupon the stories and gossip begin again. An uninterrupted flow of

filth is vomited from these sad mouths, as from a sewer. The back-shop

seems infected with it. The impression is the more disagreeable because

the room is rather dark and the faces take on fantastic deformities.

It is lighted only by a narrow window opening on a damp and filthy

court,--a sort of shaft formed by moss-eaten walls. An odor of pickle,

of rotting vegetables, of red herring, persists around us, impregnating

our garments. It is intolerable. Then each of these creatures, heaped

up on their chairs like bundles of dirty linen, plunges into the

narration of some dirty action, some scandal, some crime. Coward that

I am, I try to smile with them, to applaud with them; but I feel

something insurmountable, something like frightful disgust. A nausea

turns my stomach, forces its way to my throat, leaves a bad taste in my

mouth, and presses my temples. I should like to go away. I cannot, and

I remain there, like an idiot, heaped up like them on my chair, making

the same gestures that they make,--I remain there, stupidly listening

to these shrill voices that sound to me like dish-water gurgling and

dripping through sinks and pipes.

I know very well that we have to defend ourselves against our masters,

and I am not the last to do it, I assure you. But no; here, all the

same, that passes imagination. These women are odious to me. I detest

them, and I say to myself, in a low voice, that I have nothing in

common with them. Education, contact with stylish people, the habit

of seeing beautiful things, the reading of Paul Bourget's novels,

have saved me from these turpitudes. Ah! the pretty and amusing

monkey-tricks of the servants' halls in Paris,--they are far away!

As we are leaving, the grocer says to me, with an amiable smile:

"Pay no attention to the fact that your masters do not patronize me;

you must come and see me again."

I go back with Rose, who finishes familiarizing me with the daily

doings of the neighborhood. I had supposed that her stock of infamies

was exhausted. Not at all. She discovers and invents new and more

frightful ones. In the matter of calumny her resources are infinite.

And her tongue goes on forever, without stopping. It does not forget

anybody or anything. It is astonishing how, in a few minutes, one can

dishonor people, in the country. Thus she escorts me back to the Priory

gate. Even there she cannot make up her mind to leave me; talks on,

talks incessantly, tries to envelop and stun me with her friendship and

devotion. As for me, my head is broken by all that I have heard, and

the sight of the Priory fills me with a feeling of discouragement. Ah!

these broad, flowerless lawns! And this immense building, that has the

air of a barrack or a prison, and where, from behind each window, a

pair of eyes seems to be spying you.

The sun is warmer, the fog has disappeared, and the view of the

landscape has become clearer. Beyond the plain, on the hills, I

perceive little villages, gilded by the light, and enlivened by red

roofs. The river running through the plain, yellow and green, shines

here and there in silvery curves. And a few clouds decorate the sky

with their light and charming frescoes. But I take no pleasure in the

contemplation of all this. I have now but one desire, one will, one

obsession,--to flee from this sun, from this plain, from these hills,

from this house, and from this fat woman, whose malicious voice hurts

and tortures me.

At last she gets ready to leave me, takes my hand, and presses it

affectionately in her fat fingers gloved with mittens. She says to me:

"And then, my little one, Madame Gouin, you know, is a very amiable and

very clever woman. You must go to see her often."

She lingers longer, and adds more mysteriously:

"She has relieved many young girls. As soon as they are in any trouble,

they go to her. Neither seen or known. One can trust her, take my word

for it. She is a very, very expert woman."

With eyes more brilliant, and fastening her gaze on me with a strange

tenacity, she repeats:

"Very expert, and clever, and discreet. She is the Providence of the

neighborhood. Now, my little one, do not forget to come to see us when

you can. And go often to Madame Gouin's. You will not regret it. We

will see each other soon again."

She has gone. I see her, with her rolling gait, moving away, skirting

first the wall and then the hedge with her enormous person, and

suddenly burying herself in a road, where she disappears.

I pass by Joseph, the gardener-coachman, who is raking the paths. I

think that he is going to speak to me; he does not speak to me. He

simply looks at me obliquely, with a singular expression that almost

frightens me.

"Fine weather this morning, Monsieur Joseph."

Joseph grunts I know not what between his teeth. He is furious that I

have allowed myself to walk in the path that he is raking.

What a queer man he is, and how ill-bred! And why does he never say a

word to me? And why does he never answer when I speak to him?

In the house I find Madame by no means contented. She gives me a very

disagreeable reception, treats me very roughly:

"I beg you not to stay out so long in future."

I desire to reply, for I am vexed, irritated, unnerved. But fortunately

I restrain myself. I confine myself to muttering a little.

"What's that you say?"

"I say nothing."

"It is lucky. And furthermore, I forbid you to walk with M. Mauger's

servant. She is very bad company for you. See, everything is late this

morning, because of you."