Then it was that Germinie's abasement and degradation began to be
visible in her personal appearance, to make her stupid and slovenly. A
sort of drowsiness came over her ideas. She was no longer keen and
prompt of apprehension. What she had read and what she had learned
seemed to escape her. Her memory, which formerly retained everything,
became confused and unreliable. The sharp wit of the Parisian
maid-servant gradually vanished from her conversation, her retorts, her
laughter. Her face, once so animated, was no longer lighted up by gleams
of intelligence. In her whole person you would have said that she had
become once more the stupid peasant girl that she was when she came from
her province, when she went to a stationer's for gingerbread. She seemed
not to understand. As mademoiselle expressed it, she made faces like an
idiot. She was obliged to explain to her, to repeat two or three times
things that Germinie had always grasped on the merest hint. She asked
herself, when she saw how slow and torpid she was, if somebody had not
exchanged her maid for another.--"Why, you're getting to be a perfect
imbecile!" she would sometimes say to her testily. She remembered the
time when Germinie was so useful about finding dates, writing an address
on a card, telling her what day they had put in the wood or broached the
cask of wine,--all of which were things that her old brain could not
remember. Now Germinie remembered nothing. In the evening, when she went
over her accounts with mademoiselle, she could not think what she had
bought in the morning; she would say: "Wait!" but she would simply pass
her hand vaguely across her brow; nothing would come to her mind.
Mademoiselle, to save her tired old eyes, had fallen into the habit of
having Germinie read the newspaper to her; but she got to stumbling so
and reading with so little intelligence, that mademoiselle was compelled
to decline her services with thanks.
As her faculties failed, she abandoned and neglected her body in a like
degree. She gave no thought to her dress, nor to cleanliness even. In
her indifference she retained nothing of a woman's natural solicitude
touching her personal appearance; she did not dress decently. She wore
dresses spotted with grease and torn under the arms, aprons in rags,
worn stockings in shoes that were out at heel. She allowed the cooking,
the smoke, the coal, the wax, to soil her hands and face and simply
wiped them as she would after dusting. Formerly she had had the one
coquettish and luxurious instinct of poor women, a love for clean linen.
No one in the house had fresher caps than she. Her simple little
collars were always of that snowy whiteness that lights up the skin so
prettily and makes the whole person clean. Now she wore frayed, dirty
caps which looked as if she had slept in them. She went without ruffles,
her collar made a band of filth against the skin of her neck, and you
felt that she was less clean beneath than above. An odor of poverty,
rank and musty, arose from her. Sometimes it was so strong that
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could not refrain from saying to her: "Go and
change your clothes, my girl--you smell of the poor!"
In the street she no longer looked as if she belonged to any respectable
person. She had not the appearance of a virtuous woman's maid. She lost
the aspect of a servant who, by dint of displaying her self-esteem and
self-respect even in her garb, reflects in her person the honor and the
pride of her masters. From day to day she sank nearer to the level of
that abject, shameless creature whose dress drags in the gutter--a dirty
slattern.
As she neglected herself, so she neglected everything about her. She
kept nothing in order, she did no cleaning or washing. She allowed dirt
and disorder to make their way into the apartments, to invade
mademoiselle's own sanctum, with whose neatness mademoiselle was
formerly so well pleased and so proud. The dust collected there, the
spiders spun their webs behind the frames, the mirrors were as if
covered with a veil; the marble mantels, the mahogany furniture, lost
their lustre; moths flew up from the carpets which were never shaken,
worms ensconced themselves where the brush and broom no longer came to
disturb them; neglect spread a film of dust over all the sleeping,
neglected objects that were formerly awakened and enlivened every
morning by the maid's active hand. A dozen times mademoiselle had tried
to spur Germinie's self-esteem to action; but thereupon, for a whole
day, there was such a frantic scrubbing, accompanied by such gusts of
ill-humor, that mademoiselle would take an oath never to try again. One
day, however, she made bold to write Germinie's name with her finger in
the dust on her mirror; Germinie did not forgive her for a week. At last
mademoiselle became resigned. She hardly ventured to remark mildly, when
she saw that her maid was in good humor: "Confess, Germinie, that the
dust is very well treated with us!"
To the wondering observations of the friends who still came to see her
and whom Germinie was forced to admit, mademoiselle would reply, in a
compassionate, sympathetic tone: "Yes, it is filthy, I know! But what
can you expect? Germinie's sick, and I prefer that she shouldn't kill
herself." Sometimes, when Germinie had gone out, she would venture to
rub a cloth over a commode or touch a frame with the duster, with her
gouty hands. She would do it hurriedly, afraid of being scolded, of
having a scene, if the maid should return and detect her.
Germinie did almost no work; she barely served mademoiselle's meals. She
had reduced her mistress's breakfast and dinner to the simplest dishes,
those which she could cook most easily and quickly. She made her bed
without raising the mattress, _a l'Anglaise_. The servant that she had
been was not to be recognized in her, did not exist in her, except on
the days when mademoiselle gave a small dinner party, the number of
covers being always considerable on account of the party of children
invited. On those days Germinie emerged, as if by enchantment, from her
indolence and apathy, and, putting forth a sort of feverish strength,
she recovered all her former energy in face of her ovens and the
lengthened table. And mademoiselle was dumfounded to see her, all by
herself, declining assistance and capable of anything, prepare in a few
hours a dinner for half a score of persons, serve it and clear the table
afterwards, with the nimble hands and all the quick dexterity of her
youth.