The winter of that year should certainly have assured Mademoiselle de
Varandeuil a share of paradise hereafter. She had to undergo the reflex
action of her maid's chagrin, her nervous irritability, the vengeance of
her embittered, contradictory moods, which the approaching spring would
ere long infect with that species of malignant madness which the
critical season, the travail of nature and the restless, disturbing
fructification of the summer cause in unhealthily sensitive
organizations.
Germinie was forever wiping eyes which no longer wept, but which had
once wept copiously. She was always ready with an everlasting:
"Nothing's the matter, mademoiselle!" uttered in the tone that covers a
secret. She adopted dumb, despairing, funereal attitudes, the airs by
which a woman's body diffuses melancholy and makes her very shadow a
bore. With her face, her glance, her mouth, the folds of her dress, her
presence, the noise she made at work in the adjoining room, even with
her silence, she enveloped mademoiselle in the despair that exhaled from
her person. At the slightest word she would bristle up. Mademoiselle
could not address an observation to her, ask her the most trivial
question, give her an order or express a wish: everything was taken by
her as a reproach. And thereupon she would act like a madwoman. She
would wipe her eyes and grumble: "Oh! I am very unfortunate! I can see
that mademoiselle doesn't care for me any more!" Her spite against
various people vented itself in sublimely ingenious complaints. "That
woman always comes when it rains!" she would say, upon discovering a bit
of mud that Madame de Belleuse had left on the carpet. During the week
following New Year's Day, the week when all of Mademoiselle de
Varandeuil's remaining relatives and friends, rich and poor alike,
climbed the five flights and waited on the landing at her door for their
turns to occupy the six chairs in her bedroom, Germinie redoubled her
ill-humor, her impertinent remarks, her sulky muttering. Inventing
grievances against her mistress, she punished her constantly by a
persistent silence, which it was impossible to break. Then there would
be periods of frenzied industry. Mademoiselle would hear through the
partitions on all sides furious manipulation of the broom and duster,
the sharp, vicious scrubbing and slamming of the servant whom one
imagines muttering to herself as she maltreats the furniture: "Oh! yes,
I'll do your work for you!"
Old people are patient with servants who have been long in their
service. Long habit, the weakening will-power, the horror of change,
the dread of new faces,--everything disposes them to weakness and
cowardly concessions. Notwithstanding her quick temper, her promptness
to lose her head, to fly into a rage, to breathe fire and flame,
mademoiselle said nothing. She acted as if she saw nothing. She
pretended to be reading when Germinie entered the room. She waited,
curled up in her easy-chair, until the maid's ill-humor had blown over
or burst. She bent her back before the storm; she said no word, had no
thought of bitterness against her. She simply pitied her for causing
herself so much suffering.
In truth Germinie was not Mademoiselle de Varandeuil's maid; she was
Devotion, waiting to close her eyes. The solitary old woman, overlooked
by death, alone at the end of her life, dragging her affections from
grave to grave, had found her last friend in her servant. She had rested
her heart upon her as upon an adopted daughter, and she was especially
unhappy because she was powerless to comfort her. Moreover, at
intervals, Germinie returned to her from the depths of her brooding
melancholy and her savage humor, and threw herself on her knees before
her kind heart. Suddenly, at a ray of sunlight, a beggar's song, or any
one of the nothings that float in the air and expand the heart, she
would burst into tears and demonstrations of affection; her heart would
overflow with burning emotions, she would seem to feel a pleasure in
embracing her mistress, as if the joy of living again had effaced
everything. At other times some trifling ailment of mademoiselle's would
bring about the change; a smile would come to the old servant's face and
gentleness to her hands. Sometimes, at such moments, mademoiselle would
say: "Come, my girl--something's the matter. Tell me what it is." And
Germinie would reply: "No, mademoiselle, it's the weather."--"The
weather!" mademoiselle would repeat with a doubtful air, "the weather!"