The Diary of a Chambermaid

by Octave Mirbeau

  ‘Well, so long then,’ I said.

  ‘Oh no,’ said he. ‘Let me come up with you. Be a sport, Célestine.’

  Vaguely, more or less as a matter of form, I refused. But he insisted:

  ‘Come on now, what’s the matter with you? Suffering from heartache? Why, that’s just the best time for it.’

  He followed me. It was one of those hotels where no one pays much attention to who comes in at night. With its dark, narrow staircase, sticky banister, sordid atmosphere and fetid smells, it was something between an hotel for prostitutes and a thieves’ hide-out. My companion coughed to reassure himself, while I thought to myself, my mind filled with disgust:

  ‘What a miserable hole, compared with the villa at Houlgate or the warm flower-filled rooms at Lincoln Street.

  I had no sooner got into the room and locked the door than he flung himself upon me, and threw me brutally on the bed, my skirts in the air … Really, what a bitch one can be sometimes!

  So once again life had got hold of me again, with all its ups and downs, its eternal succession of faces, its stupid affairs that are over before they have begun … and its abrupt changes from a life of luxury to starving on the street.

  What an extraordinary thing it is! I, who in the exaltation of love, in my ardent longing to sacrifice myself, had sincerely and passionately wanted to die, was now, for several months, continually worried by the thought that I might have caught Monsieur George’s disease. The slightest indisposition, and the most fleeting pain, filled me with terror. Often, at night, I woke up in a cold sweat, panic-stricken, and the power of suggestion would make me feel pains in my chest, and I would examine my sputum, imagining that I could see flecks of blood in it. From continually feeling my pulse, I made myself feverish; contemplating myself in the glass, I would imagine that I was becoming hollow-eyed, that my cheeks had the same deadly flush I used to see on Monsieur George’s. Leaving a dance hall one night, I caught cold, and for the next week I was always coughing, so that I was convinced it was all up with me. I even burnt candles to St Anthony of Padua. But when, despite my fears, I found that I was as well as ever and still able to stand up to the double strain of work and pleasure, the mood passed.

  Last year, on the 6th October, like every other year, I bought some flowers to put on Monsieur George’s grave. It was in the Montmartre cemetery. As I was walking along the main avenue, I saw, a few steps ahead of me, his poor grandmother. Oh, how old she had become, and so had the two maids who were with her. Her body bent, and unsteady on her feet, she was walking slowly, supported by the two maids who were as bent and unsteady as their mistress. They were followed by a porter, carrying a huge wreath of red and white roses. Not wishing to overtake them and be recognized, I slowed down. Hidden by a high tombstone, I waited until the poor old woman had deposited her flowers and murmured a few prayers over her grandson’s grave. They returned, at the same slow pace, along the little path where I was standing, their clothes almost brushing against the stone that hid me. I crouched lower to avoid seeing them, for it seemed to me that it was my remorse, the shadows of my remorse, bearing down upon me. Would she have recognized me? I think not. They were walking without looking at anything, without seeing what was going on around them, and their eyes had the staring fixity of the blind, and though their lips were moving, no sound issued from them. They were like three ancient corpses, lost in the maze of the cemetery and seeking their graves. And I recalled that tragic night, and my face dripping with the blood that flowed from George’s mouth. It made my heart go cold … But at last they were gone.

  Where are they today, those pathetic shadows? Perhaps by this time they are really dead. Perhaps, after all their wanderings, they have at last found the silence and the peace that they were seeking.

  Does it matter? It was really an odd idea of hers, that poor old woman, to choose me as sick nurse for such a young and handsome youth as Monsieur George. And honestly, when I think back over that time, what most astounds me is that she never suspected anything, never saw anything, never had the faintest inkling of what was happening! Yes, it’s obvious now that all three of them must have been pretty simple-minded … After all, didn’t they still believe in people!

  Today, I saw Captain Mauger again, over the hedge, crouched over a newly-dug flower bed and planting out some pansies and wallflowers. As soon as he saw me he left his work and came over to the hedge to talk to me. Apparently he no longer bears me any grudge for the death of his ferret. Indeed, he seems quite cheerful. Bursting with laughter he informed me that that morning he had caught the Lanlaire’s white cat in a snare. Probably he looks upon the cat as his revenge for the ferret.

  ‘That makes the tenth that I’ve bumped off, as easy as that,’ he explained, tapping his thigh and rubbing the earth from his hand. ‘I’ve had enough of him scratching up the earth in my frames, the brute, and ruining my seed beds … How if I was to catch that Lanlaire and his missus in a snare, eh? The pigs! Ha, ha, ha! Not a bad idea, what?’

  The thought of it convulsed him with laughter for a moment, then suddenly, his eyes sparkling with malice, he asked:

  ‘Why don’t you put some itching powder in their beds, the brutes? Damn it, I could give you a whole packet of it. Now that would be an ideal By the way, you remember Kléber, my little ferret?’

  ‘Yes, what about it?’

  ‘Well, I did eat him, you know.’

  ‘I bet it wasn’t very tasty?’

  ‘Phew, it was like eating rabbit that’s gone bad.’

  And that was all the funeral service the poor animal ever got.

  The captain also told me that, the previous week, he had caught a hedgehog under a pile of wood, and was beginning to tame it. He calls it Bourbaki… That also would be an idea! An intelligent, extraordinary creature who eats everything!

  ‘Heavens, yes,’ he exclaimed, ‘that damned hedgehog will eat steak, mutton, fat bacon, Gruyère cheese and jam, all in the same day. He’s marvellous, you simply can’t satisfy him. He’s like me, he eats anything.’

  At that moment the little servant went by, wheeling a barrowful of stones, old sardine tins and a heap of kitchen waste to throw on the rubbish heap.

  ‘Come here a minute!’ the captain hailed her. And when, in reply to his questions, I had told him that Monsieur Lanlaire was out shooting, and his wife had gone to town and Joseph was shopping, he began hurling all the stones and every bit of rubbish, one after the other, into our garden, shouting at the top of his voice: ‘Take that, you swine; take that, you miserable brute!’

  Before long a freshly-worked plot where, the day before, Joseph had sown some peas, was covered with stones and rubbish. When he had emptied the barrow, the captain expressed his delight by hooting and waving his arms in the air. Then, twirling his old grey moustache, he said with a triumphant leer:

  ‘Mademoiselle Célestine, you’re a fine-looking girl, by God! Come round and see me sometime, when Rose isn’t there, what? That would be an idea!’

  What a man! He’s convinced he’s still capable of anything.

  27 OCTOBER

  At last I’ve had a letter from Monsieur Jean, a very dull one. To read it you would never imagine we had been on such intimate terms. Not a word of friendship or tenderness, not a single memory! All he talks about is himself. Yet if he is to be believed it appears that Jean has become quite a personage. You can tell that from the condescending, almost scornful, attitude he adopts towards me throughout the letter. He just wants to impress me. I always knew he was vain—and him such a good-looking fellow!—but never like he is now. Oh men, they’re all the same! Always trying to show off!

  It seems that Jean is still first footman at Countess Fardin’s, and that, at the moment, the Countess herself is perhaps the most talked-of woman in France. Besides being a footman, Jean has taken to going to political meetings and become a Royalist conspirator. He attends demonstrations organised by the Coppée, Lemaitre and Quesnay de Beaurepaire, and he is conspiring w
ith General Mercier to overthrow the Republic. The other evening he accompanied Coppée to a meeting of the Patrie Française. He proudly sat on the platform behind this mighty patriot, and was even allowed to hold his overcoat for him all evening. So now he can boast of having held the overcoats of all the greatest patriots of the day! That will be a great thing in his life … Another evening, coming out of a meeting called by Dreyfus’s supporters, to which the Countess had sent him to boo the speakers and ‘beat up the cosmopolitans’, he was hauled off to the police-station for shouting ‘Death to the Jews!’, ‘Long live the King!’, ‘Long live the Army!’ But the countess threatened to have a question asked in the Chamber of Deputies, and he was immediately released. She even increased his wages by twelve francs every month for this doughty feat of arms … His name was mentioned in Le Gaulois by Monsieur Arthur Meyer, and also appeared in a subscription list opened by La Libre Parole on behalf of Colonel Henry, to which he had contributed 100 francs … Coppée has put forward his name for office, and has made him an honorary member of the Patrie Française, one of the top-drawer organizations. All the servants in the great house belong to it, along with all the counts, marquesses and dukes. When he came to lunch yesterday, General Mercier said to him: ‘Well, my good Jean?’—Good Jean, my foot! And in an article in the Anti-Juif, ‘Yet another victim of the Yids’, Jules Guérin wrote: ‘Our valiant anti-Semitic comrade, Monsieur Jean’, etc. etc. Finally, Monsieur Forain, who now almost lives in the house, asked Jean to pose for a drawing which was to represent the Spirit of the Fatherland … he said Jean had ‘just the phiz for it’.

  It is amazing what handsome tips he is getting these days in addition to all the flattering honourable mentions, just from mixing with such illustrious folk. And, if everything seems to suggest, General Mercier decides to call him as a witness at the trial of Zola which the General Staff intends to arrange before long, that will be his crowning glory. For, in the best society, the giving of false evidence is at present all the rage. To be selected as a false witness not only means immediate fame, but is looked upon as the equivalent of winning first prize in the State lottery. Monsieur Jean is quite convinced that he is making a growing name for himself in the Champs-Elysées district. When he goes to the café in the rue François I to play cards, or takes the countess’s dogs out for their evening piss, he is the object of universal curiosity and respect … and the dogs as well, presumably!

  That is why, now he has achieved a notoriety that must inevitably spread from the quarter to the whole of Paris, and from Paris to the whole of France, he has decided to take out a subscription for the Argus de la Presse, as the countess does. When anything really important appears about him, he will send it on to me. That’s the best he can do for me, for I must understand that he just hasn’t the time to bother with me. Later on, we’ll see … ‘when we are in power’, as he remarks casually. Everything that has happened to me is my own fault … I have never known how to behave myself properly … I have never stuck to anything … I have given up the most excellent situations without any advantage to myself. If I hadn’t always been so undisciplined, perhaps I, too, might have been on good terms with General Mercier, Coppée and Deroulède … And, perhaps, in spite of being only a woman my name might have been mentioned in Le Gaulois, which is so important for all the other people in service. And so on, and so on.

  By the time I had finished reading this letter I was almost in tears, for I feel that Monsieur Jean has pretty well broken with me, and that I cannot count on him any longer … nor on anyone else? He doesn’t even mention the girl who has taken my place … Oh, I can just see them, the pair of them, in the room I used to know so well, kissing and cuddling, and going off together like we used to to theatres and dance halls. I can see him in his oilskin mac, coming back from the races after losing all his money, and saying to this other woman, as he so often said to me:

  ‘Lend me your jewels and watch, will you, so that I can pop them?’

  Unless, of course, in his new role as politician and Royalist conspirator he has now got other ambitions, and instead of carrying on with the maids has affairs with their mistresses. But he’ll get over it one of these days.

  Is it really my fault, what has happened to me? Perhaps. Yet it seems to me my whole existence has been weighed down by some fatality I have never been able to control, and that this is why I have never been able to keep the same job for more than six months. If I was not sacked, it was I who gave notice because I couldn’t stand it any longer. It’s a funny thing, but it is also sad … I have always been in a hurry to be ‘somewhere else’. I have always set my hopes on this chimerical ‘somewhere else’, seeing it through the eyes of poetry as a deceptive mirage of far-off things … especially since the time I have spent at Houlgate with poor Monsieur George. Ever since then I have felt a restless longing, a painful need, to reach out towards unattainable ideas and forms. I think that all too brief glimpse of another world was fatal to me, and that since it was impossible for me to get to know it better it would have been better for me not to have known it at all. All these roads leading to the unknown are simply a deception! You set out again and again, but it is always the same … See that dusty horizon, there in the distance … blue and pink, fresh and luminous as a dream? How good it would be to live there. But you draw nearer, you arrive, and all you find is sand and stones and cliffs, desolate as the walls of a town. Nothing else … and above the sand and stones, a grey, opaque, lowering sky, a sky into which the day sinks in despair and where the light weeps soot. Nothing else, nothing at all of what you set out to find. Moreover, I no longer know what it is I am hoping to find … I no longer even know who I am.

  Servants are not normal social beings, not part of society. The lives they lead are disjointed, and they themselves are made up of bits and pieces that do not fit together. They are worse than that, they are monstrous hybrids. They have ceased to be part of the common people from whom they spring and they will never become part of the bourgeoisie whom they live amongst and wait on. They have lost the generous responses, the native strength, of the people they have rejected, and have acquired the shameful vices of the bourgeoisie without the necessary means of satisfying them; they have adopted their vile feelings, their cowardly fears, their criminal appetites, without the background, and therefore without the excuse, of their wealth. Living in this ‘respectable’ bourgeois world, simply from breathing in the fatal atmosphere that rises from this putrid drain, they lose all sense of spiritual security, and cease to be aware of their own separate existence. They wander like ghosts of themselves amongst a crowd of strangers, and when they search their memories all they can find there is filth and suffering. They are always laughing, but the laughter is forced; and, since it does not spring from joys encountered or hopes realized, it always wears the bitter grimace of revolt, the cruel sneer of sarcasm. Nothing is so heart-rendingly ugly as this laughter—it burns and withers … Perhaps it would have been better if I had cried! Yet I don’t know … Anyhow, to hell with it!

  But here, nothing happens … And I cannot get used to it. It is this monotony, the absolute immobility of life here that I find hardest to bear. I want to get away from here. Get away? But where, and how? And since I have no idea, I just stay where I am.

  Madame remains exactly the same: distrustful, methodical, hard, rapacious, not a single generous impulse, utterly lacking in spontaneity and with never the slightest gleam of happiness on that stony face. The master has fallen back into his old ways, and from his shifty look I imagine that he bears me a grudge for having been so hard on him; but his grudges are not dangerous. After lunch, armed and gaitered, he goes off shooting, gets back at nightfall—though he no longer asks me to help him pull off his boots—and at nine o’clock goes off to bed. He is as loutish as ever, a vaguely comic creature … and he’s putting on weight. How on earth do rich people manage to resign themselves to such a dreary existence? Sometimes I wonder whether, perhaps, I might have made somethi
ng of him. But he never has a penny, and he certainly wouldn’t have given me the slightest pleasure. And since Madame’s not jealous …?

  The terrible thing about this house is the silence. I just cannot get used to it, creeping about, ‘walking on air’, as Joseph says. Often, in these dark, cold passages, I feel like a ghost, a spectre. It’s absolutely stifling here … yet I stay put!

  My one distraction is visiting Madame Gouin, the grocer’s wife, after mass on Sundays. Though she disgusts me, boredom outweighs disgust, so I continue to go. At least we are amongst ourselves there, and can gossip and play the fool and have a drink. At least there is an illusion of life, and it is a way of passing the time. The other Sunday, as I had not seen the rat-faced girl with the running eyes for some time, I asked about her.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing … nothing serious, at least,’ said the grocer’s wife, in a tone which she tried hard to make mysterious.

  ‘Is she ill, then?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s nothing. In a couple of days she will have quite got over it.’

  And Mademoiselle Rose glanced at me in confirmation, with an expression that seemed to say: ‘You see? What did I tell you? She’s a very clever woman.’

  While I was there today, I heard from the grocer’s wife that yesterday the gamekeepers had found in the forest of Raillon, hidden amongst the brambles and dead leaves, the body of a little girl, horribly violated. It seems she is the daughter of one of the roadmen, known in the village as ‘little Clara’. She was a bit simple-minded but a sweet little thing … not yet twelve years old. As you can imagine, it’s an absolute godsend for a place like this, where you are reduced to chewing over the same old gossip week after week. And of course, they were all hard at it already.