The Diary of a Chambermaid

by Octave Mirbeau

  ‘Sure enough,’ I said to myself, ‘she’s another of these lockers-up. I bet she counts how many lumps of sugar and how many grapes are left and, before she goes to bed, marks all the bottles. Oh well, it’s just the same for a change!’

  Still, I must wait and see, and not allow myself to be too much influenced by first impressions. Among so many mouths that have spoken to me, so many eyes that have tried to peer into my soul, perhaps—who can tell?—I shall one day find a friendly mouth and compassionate eyes. Anyhow, it costs nothing to go on hoping.

  As soon as I arrived, still dazed after travelling for four hours in a third-class railway carriage, and without anyone in the kitchen even thinking of offering me a slice of bread and butter, Madame took me all over the house, from the cellars to the attics, to show me ‘what was expected of me.’ She certainly doesn’t mean to waste either her time or mine. Oh, what a huge house it is, and every nook and cranny stuffed with furniture. To look after it properly would need at least four servants. In addition to the very large ground floor, which is extended on either side of the terrace by two little pavilions, there are two more storeys, so that I shall be continually running up and downstairs. Madame, who has a small sitting-room near the dining-room, has had the brilliant idea of putting the linen-room, where I shall be working, right under the rafters, next to our bedrooms. And then all the cupboards and wardrobes and drawers and storerooms, packed with every kind of junk—you can have the lot as far as I’m concerned, for I shall never be able to find my way about.

  Every few seconds Madame would point to something and say: ‘You must take great care of that, my girl… That’s very pretty, my girl … That’s very rare, my girl … That cost a great deal, my girl.’

  Of course she couldn’t just use my name. Instead, she kept on with her everlasting ‘my girl this … my girl that,’ in that overbearing, hurtful tone of voice that is so disheartening, and sets such a distance, so much hatred, between us and our mistresses. After all, I don’t call her ‘my good woman.’ And then this beastly habit she has of insisting that everything is ‘very expensive.’ It’s infuriating. Everything that belongs to her, even the most miserable tuppenny-ha’penny things, is ‘very expensive.’ These women are so houseproud, you never know what they will find to boast about next … It’s pitiful … After explaining to me how an oil lamp worked, just an ordinary lamp like any other, she insisted:

  ‘You know, my girl, this lamp cost a great deal of money, and if it needs repairing it has to be sent to England. So treasure it like the apple of your eye.’

  I should like to have replied: ‘So what, old girl? How about your chamber-pot? Did that cost a great deal? Do you have to send that to London when it gets cracked?’

  No, really, they’ve got a nerve, making such a fuss about nothing. And when I think that it’s simply to humiliate and impress you!

  After all, the house isn’t all that grand … nothing to write home about, really. From the outside, standing amongst big clumps of trees and with the garden sloping gently down to the river and laid out in huge rectangular lawns, it does have a certain distinction. But inside … it’s old and rickety and gloomy, and smells as though the windows were never opened. I can’t understand how anybody can live in it. Nothing but poky little rooms, awkward wooden stairs that shake and creak when you tread on them and where you could easily break your neck, and long dark passages where, instead of fine, thick carpets, there are only badly-laid red tiles, polished again and again till they’re as slippery as ice. The walls between the rooms are too thin, made of wood so dried out that the rooms echo like the inside of a violin. Proper country style. And the furniture certainly isn’t up to Paris standards. Room after room filled with old mahogany, old moth-eaten curtains, old worn-out, faded carpets, ridiculously uncomfortable armchairs and old worm-eaten sofas with no springs. How they must make your shoulders ache and take the skin off your backside! Just imagine, and me so fond of bright colours, and huge, springy divans where you can stretch out voluptuously on piles of cushions, and all the pretty furniture you can get nowadays, so luxurious and rich and gay. All this dreary gloom makes me feel melancholy. I’m afraid I shall never get used to such a lack of comfort and elegance, to all these crumbling antiques and old-fashioned designs …

  The mistress doesn’t exactly dress in Parisian style, either. She just doesn’t know the meaning of chic, and has certainly never been near a decent dressmaker … A proper sight. Although she has certain pretensions about her clothes, she’s at least ten years behind the fashion … and what a fashion! Mind you, she might not be so bad if she tried, at least not too bad. But what’s really wrong with her is that she arouses no sympathy, there’s nothing feminine about her. Yet she has regular features, pretty, naturally fair hair, and a good skin; though her colouring’s a bit on the high side, as if she had some serious internal illness … I know her type only too well, and I’m never taken in by the brilliance of their complexion. Pink and white on the surface all right, but underneath it, rotten. They can’t stand up to anything, and only keep going with girdles and medical bandages and pessaries, and every kind of secret horror and complicated mechanism. Of course, that doesn’t prevent them putting on airs in public. Oh yes, if you please, very charming … flirting in corners, showing off their made-up skin, making eyes, waggling their bottoms, when all they’re really fit for is to be preserved in spirits … A miserable lot. It’s almost impossible to get on with them, I assure you, and there’s no pleasure at all in working for them …

  Whether by temperament or because of some organic indisposition, I should be very surprised if Madame was much good in bed. You can tell from the expression on her face, from her awkward gestures and the stiff movements of her body that she hasn’t an idea about making love … and she certainly wouldn’t know what it was to really let herself go. Her whole body has that sour, dried-up mummified quality that one finds in elderly virgins, though it’s unusual in blondes … She certainly isn’t the sort of woman you could imagine passing out at the sound of music, even music as beautiful as Faust, or fainting voluptuously into the arms of a good-looking man. Not on your life! She isn’t, even, one of those very ugly women, whose faces are sometimes lit up by sexual passion with such radiant vitality and seductive beauty … Still, you can’t always judge by appearances. Some of the grumpiest, most severe-looking women I’ve ever seen, women you would think were immune from the slightest feeling of love or desire, turned out to be regular trollops, prepared to go the whole hog with the footman or coachman.

  Although Madame does her best to make herself agreeable, she certainly doesn’t know how to set about it like some of those I’ve known. I should think she’s a mean, grumbling sneak, with a nasty nature and a spiteful heart … the sort that would always be after you, plaguing the life out of you in every possible way … ‘Can you do this? Can you do that?’ Or, ‘Do you break things? Are you careful? Have you got a good memory? Are you tidy in your habits?’ On and on and on. And then ‘Are you clean? I am very particular about cleanliness. There are some things I am prepared to overlook, but cleanliness I insist upon.’ What does she take me for? A girl off the farm, or a country skivvy? Cleanliness indeed. I have heard that one before. They all say the same, but as often as not when you get down to brass tacks, when you lift up their skirts and have a look at their underclothes … why they are just filthy, enough to turn your stomach sometimes.

  Anyway, I don’t believe Madame is all that clean. When she showed me her dressing-room, I didn’t see a bath or even a bidet, none of the things a woman needs if she’s to look after herself properly. And certainly none of the knick-knacks and bottles and perfumed intimate things that I so much enjoy playing about with … I can scarcely wait to see her in her birthday suit … That’ll be a sight for sore eyes…

  That evening, as I was laying the table, the master came into the dining-room. He had just come in from shooting. He is very tall, with great broad shoulders, a huge black mou
stache and pale skin. Though his manners are rather heavy and awkward, he seems to be a decent sort. Obviously, he is no genius like M. Jules Lemaitre, whom I’ve waited on so often in Paris, nor a swell like M. de Janzé —Oh, he was a one! From his thick curled hair, his bull’s neck, his athlete’s calves and his full lips, very red and smiling, you can see he is strong and good-natured. I wouldn’t mind betting he enjoys a bit of sex when he can get it! I could tell straight away, by his nose, with its sensual twitching nostrils, and by the brilliance of his eyes, gentle and gay at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a human being with such eyebrows, so thick they’re almost obscene … and such hairy hands. Like a lot of physically powerful but not very intelligent men, he’s extremely shy.

  He looked me over with a funny expression that was a mixture of kindliness, surprise and satisfaction, but which was also lascivious, though not impertinent; suggestive, though not brutal. It is obvious that he has not been used to maids like me … I have quite bowled him over already, made a deep impression on him. With some embarrassment he said: ‘Oh … er … oh, so you’re the new maid?’

  Thrusting forward my bosom and lowering my eyes, and in my sweetest voice, at once saucy and modest, I answered simply: ‘Yes, sir, I am.’

  Then he stammered: ‘So you managed to get here all right? That’s good, very good.’

  He would have liked to continue the conversation, but, being neither eloquent nor resourceful, could think of nothing to say. I was highly amused by his embarrassment. After a short silence he managed to bring out: ‘So you come from Paris?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, good.’

  Then, growing bolder: ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Célestine, sir.’

  To hide his embarrassment he began rubbing his hands together, and then went on:

  ‘Célestine? And very nice too, so long as my wife doesn’t insist upon changing it—it’s one of her manias.’

  To which I replied in a respectful and submissive tone: ‘That is for Madame to decide, sir.’

  ‘Yes, of course, of course. But it’s such a pretty name.’

  I almost burst out laughing. He began walking about the room, then, suddenly flinging himself into a chair and stretching out his legs, he looked at me as though to excuse himself and, in an almost pleading voice, asked: ‘Well, Célestine—I shall always go on calling you Célestine—would you help me to pull off my boots? You wouldn’t mind, would you?’

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  ‘They are very awkward, you see … difficult to get off.’

  With a movement that I did my best to make graceful and supple, even provoking, I knelt down in front of him, and while I was helping him pull off his boots, which were soaking wet and covered with mud, I was perfectly aware that he was delightedly smelling the back of my neck and that his eyes were following the outline of my bust and as much of me as he could see through my dress with growing interest. Suddenly he muttered:

  ‘Bless me, Célestine, but you smell jolly nice.’

  Without looking up, I said as artlessly as I could: ‘What, me, sir?’

  ‘Why, of course you. Damn it all, it’s certainly not my feet!’

  ‘Oh sir.’ And I managed to put into this ‘oh sir’ at once a protest on behalf of his feet, and a kind of friendly rebuke for his familiarity—friendly to the point of encouragement. I think he understood, for once again, in a voice that trembled slightly, he repeated:

  ‘Yes, Célestine, you smell jolly good, jolly good.’

  Oh, so the big fellow was coming on a bit. I pretended to be slightly shocked by his insistence, and remained silent. Timid as he is, and knowing nothing of feminine wiles, he was upset, afraid lest he had gone too far, and hurriedly changed the subject, he said: ‘I hope you’re settling down here, Célestine?’

  What an idea—‘settling down’ indeed, when I’ve scarcely been in the place a couple of hours. I had to bite my lip to stop laughing. The old boy’s got some funny ways … really he’s a bit stupid. But that’s nothing to worry about. I don’t dislike him. Even his vulgarity has a kind of strength, and there’s a masculine smell about him, warm and penetrating like the scent of a wild animal, that I find rather attractive.

  When we had finished taking off his boots, in order to leave him with a good impression of me I asked him in my turn: ‘So you are fond of shooting, sir? Did you have a good day’s sport?’

  ‘I never have any sport, Célestine,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘I only carry a gun as an excuse for walking—anything to get out of this house, where I’m bored to death.’

  ‘So you find it boring, sir.’

  Then, after a pause, he gallantly corrected himself:

  ‘That is to say, I used to be bored, but now … at last… well …’

  And with a stupidly touching smile, he continued:

  ‘Célestine! Do you mind fetching me my slippers? I’m sorry, but …’

  ‘That’s what I’m here for, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose it is. You’ll find them under the staircase, in the little closet on the left.’

  By now I felt that he was ready to eat out of my hand. He’s not one of the cunning ones, but the kind that surrendered at the first blow. You could do what you like with him …

  Dinner, which was far from being luxurious and consisted of left-overs from the day before, passed without incident, almost in silence. The master ate ravenously, while Madame picked at her food sulkily, with a contemptuous expression on her face. But you should see the number of tablets, syrups, drops and pills that she gets through, a regular chemist’s shop, that has to be laid out beside her plate at every meal! They scarcely spoke and, when they did, only about local affairs, which were of very little interest to me. One thing I gathered was that they do very little entertaining. It was obvious that they were not at all interested in what they were saying: they both had their minds fixed on me, and both of them were observing me, though with very different ends in view. The mistress, severe and stiff, contemptuous even, was more and more hostile and already thinking up all the dirty tricks she could play on me; the master never raised his eyes from his plate, but nevertheless they kept flickering in a very significant way, and every now and then, though he tried to conceal it, came to rest on my hands … I have never been able to understand what it is that men seem to find so exciting about my hands … I pretended not to notice what was going on, coming and going, dignified, reserved, attentive and remote … Oh, if only they could have seen into my mind and heard what it was saying, as I saw and heard what was going on in theirs.

  I simply love waiting at table. That is where your employers give themselves away, revealing all the beastliness, all the squalor of their inner natures. Careful at first, and keeping an eye on each other, gradually they begin to expose themselves for what they are, without any pretence. They forget all about the servants lurking in the background, noting down every moral blemish, every iniquity, every secret scar, all the infamous and ignoble dreams concealed in the minds of respectable people. Collecting these revelations, classifying and labelling them against the day of reckoning when they will become a terrible weapon in our hands, is one of the great pleasures of our job, a precious revenge for all the humiliations we endure.

  From this first contact with my new employers I was not able to gather any very distinct and positive impressions. But I did feel that things were not going well between them, that the mistress was boss, while the master counted for nothing, and was as scared of her as a child. Oh, it can’t be much fun for the poor man. He certainly has plenty to put up with from her … I fancy I shall have a good time here now and then.

  During dessert Madame, who throughout the meal had been continually sniffing at my hands and arms, said in a clear, peremptory voice: ‘I do not like people to wear scent.’

  And when I made no reply, pretending not to realize that she was speaking to me, she added: ‘You understand, Célestine?’
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br />   ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  I glanced stealthily at the poor master, who takes such pleasure in perfume, at least in mine. Apparently paying no attention, but at heart humiliated and hurt, he was sitting with both elbows on the table, watching a wasp hovering above the fruit dish. And, in the deepening twilight, a mournful hush fell upon the room, and something inexpressibly sad, some unspeakable weight, seemed to have descended upon these two creatures, till I found myself wondering what purpose they really served by their presence here on earth.

  ‘The lamp, Célestine!’

  Madame’s voice, shriller than ever in the shadowy silence, made me jump.

  ‘Surely you can see it’s getting dark. I shouldn’t have to remind you. Don’t let this happen again.’

  As I was lighting the lamp, the one that could only be mended in England, I felt like calling out to the poor master: ‘Just you wait a bit, my beauty. Don’t be so upset. I’ll see you have your fill of the forbidden perfumes you like so much. You shall breathe them in my hair, on my mouth, on my breast, on every part of my body. We’ll soon show the old misery what it is to enjoy ourselves, I promise you.’

  And to give material form to my silent promise, as I put the lamp on the table, I was careful to brush gently against his arm. Then I withdrew.

  The servants’ quarters here are hardly what you’d call cheerful. There are only two others besides myself; a cook who never stops grumbling, and a gardener-coachman who never says a word. The cook’s name is Marianne, the coachman’s Joseph; wretched peasants, the pair of them. She, fat, soft, flabby, sprawling, the fleshy folds of her neck showing above a filthy kerchief that you’d think she used for wiping her saucepans, with enormous shapeless breasts under a kind of blue cotton blouse bespattered with grease, and a skirt too short for her, revealing thick ankles and broad feet clad in grey woollen stockings; he, in his shirtsleeves, with a green baize apron and clogs, clean-shaven, dried-up and nervy, with a hideous grin on his lips that splits his face in two from ear to ear, with a twisted walk and the sly movements of a sacristan. Such are my two companions.