The Diary of a Chambermaid

by Octave Mirbeau

  ‘You see, Mary, a woman should always look after herself properly, and keep her skin soft and white. You’ve got a pretty face, so you must learn to arrange your hair to suit it … You have a very fine bust, so you ought to make the most of it. And your legs are magnificent, if only you would let people see them now and again … It’s more becoming …’

  On the whole I was content, yet somewhere inside me there remained a certain misgiving, an obscure feeling of suspicion. I could not forget the extraordinary stories that I heard from the other servants. Whenever I praised Madame, or told them about her many acts of kindness towards me, the cook would say:

  ‘Yes, yes, that’s all very fine … But you just wait and see what she’s up to. What she wants is for you to sleep with that son of hers, so that hell spend more time at home and not cost them so much, the old skinflints. She’s already tried it on with plenty of others … Why, she’s even tried it on with her own friends … married and unmarried. Yes, even girls, the old cow! Only Monsieur Xavier isn’t having any … the lad prefers tarts. You’ll see, you’ll see.’

  And then she would add, almost regretfully: ‘Oh, if only I were in your place, I’d sting them … And I’d make no bones about it either!’

  When she spoke to me like this I couldn’t help feeling rather ashamed, but I tried to reassure myself by pretending that cook was jealous of Madame’s obvious preference for me.

  Every morning, at nine o’clock, I used to draw Monsieur Xavier’s curtains and take him his morning tea. It’s silly, but whenever I went into his room my heart used to start beating and I would feel quite apprehensive. For a long time he paid not the slightest attention to me. I used to hang about the room, putting his things ready, preparing his bath, trying to be as nice as I could and show myself off to advantage. But he never said a word to me, except to complain in a sleepy, grumbling voice that I’d woken him too early. His indifference vexed me, and I redoubled my efforts to attract his attention. Every day I expected something to happen, and Monsieur Xavier’s silence, his complete lack of interest in my appearance, irritated me beyond measure. What I should have done if what I expected had actually happened, I just didn’t bother to think. All I wanted was that it should happen …

  He was really a very good-looking lad, much better than his photograph made him out to be. His light blonde moustache outlined the curve of his lips, which were red and full, just asking to be kissed. His eyes light blue flecked with yellow, had a curious fascination for me, and when he moved he had the cruel, indolent grace of a girl or a wild animal. He was tall and slim, and extremely supple, and you could feel a kind of cynicism and corruption about him, that gave him an ultra-modern, very seductive elegance. Apart from the fact that I had taken to him the first time I saw him, and that I desired him for myself, the effect of his resistance to me, or rather his indifference, was that, before long, desire had become something stronger, and I fell in love with him.

  One morning when I went into his room, I found Monsieur Xavier already awake and sitting bare-legged on the side of his bed. I remember that he was wearing a nightshirt of white silk, with blue spots … One of his feet was tucked up underneath him and the other on the floor, so that his position was extremely revealing and not at all decent. Pretending to be shocked, I was about to withdraw. But he called me back:

  ‘Hi, what’s the matter? Come on in. What is there to be afraid of? Have you never seen a man before?’

  He pulled a fold of his nightgown over his knee and, folding his hands on his lap and swaying his body, he sat watching me while I deposited the tray on the table in front of the fire, in such an impudent way that I couldn’t help blushing a little. Then, for all the world as though this were the first time he had ever set eyes on me, he said:

  ‘Why, you’re a pretty smart girl … How long have you been in the place?’

  ‘Three weeks, sir.’

  ‘But that’s marvellous.’

  ‘What’s marvellous, sir.’

  ‘That this is the first time I’ve noticed how good-looking you are.’

  Then, stretching out both his legs and patting his thighs, which were as round and white as a woman’s, he exclaimed:

  ‘Come here.’

  As I went towards him I was trembling slightly. Without saying a word, he put his arm round me and, sniffing me all over, pulled me down beside him on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Oh, Monsieur Xavier,’ I whispered, struggling feebly. ‘Please stop. What if your parents were to see you?’

  But he only laughed.

  ‘My parents? Oh, I’m absolutely fed up with them …’

  This was one of his favourite expressions. When anybody asked him anything, he would say he was absolutely fed up, he seemed to be fed up with everything.

  In order to delay the moment of the final assault, for his hands were already feeling impatiently for my breasts, I asked him:

  ‘Tell me something, Monsieur Xavier … There’s one thing that always intrigues me. How comes it that you are never to be seen at your mother’s dinner parties?’

  ‘Surely, sweetie, you wouldn’t want me to … No, really! My mother’s dinner parties bore me to tears.’

  ‘And why is it,’ I went on, ‘that your room is the only one in the house where there isn’t a portrait of the Pope?’

  This question obviously delighted him. He replied:

  ‘Well, my little pussy, you see I happen to be an anarchist … I’ve seen too much of all this religious business, all these Jesuits and priests. I’m absolutely fed up with them … Just imagine dining with a roomful of people like Mama and Papa. No, no, it’s out of the question!’

  By this time I was beginning to feel quite at ease with Monsieur Xavier, for I had discovered that, not only did he have the same depraved habits as the Paris corner boys, but he also spoke with the same drawling accent. I felt as though I had known him for years and years.

  But now it was his turn to question me.

  ‘Tell me something … Do you sleep with Papa?’

  ‘With your father?’ I cried, pretending to be scandalized. ‘Oh, Monsieur Xavier … a saintly man like him?’

  He burst out laughing at the top of his voice. ‘But why-ever not? He sleeps with every maid we have … He’s crazy about maids. They’re the only ones that excite him. Do you honestly mean to tell me you haven’t slept with him yet? … You amaze me.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t,’ I replied, also laughing. ‘Though he did give me copies of Le Fin de Siècle to read, and Rigolo and Les Petites femmes de Paris.’

  This seemed to make him almost delirious with pleasure, and with another burst of laughter he exclaimed:

  ‘Oh, but Papa … he really is simply marvellous!’

  And then letting himself go, he went on in the most comical tone of voice:

  ‘It’s just the same with Mama … Yesterday there was another awful scene with her. She said I was bringing dishonour on both of them. Would you believe it … And all this religion … and society … and all the rest of it. It’s enough to make anyone die of laughter … In the end I just told her: “Look, my dear little mother, we’ll make an agreement …The day you give up having lovers, I’ll pull myself together”. Pretty good, what? … Anyhow it made her shut up. No, no, they bore me to tears, my parents. I’m absolutely fed up with them and their goings-on … By the way, you know Fumeau?’

  ‘No, Monsieur Xavier.’

  ‘Yes, you must … Anthime Fumeau.’

  ‘But I assure you …’

  ‘A big fellow … quite young … very red cheeks and ultra-smart … with the finest turn-out in Paris. Not to mention an income of three million a year from Cabri tarts. But of course you must know him …’

  ‘But I tell you I don’t.’

  ‘You amaze me! Why everybody knows him … Fumeau’s biscuits! The man who was made a ward of chancery a couple of months ago? Surely you must know who I mean?’

  ‘But I haven’t the slightest idea, on my word.
’

  ‘Oh well, never mind, little silly … Anyhow, last year I played a wonderful trick on this Fumeau. Guess what? … Can’t you guess?’

  ‘As I don’t know him, how do you expect me to?’

  ‘Well, it was like this, little pussy … I fixed things up between Fumeau and Mama … Word of honour! A brilliant idea, wasn’t it? and the joke of it was that, in less than two months, she had stung him for 300,000 of the best! … It’s as bad as Papa and his charities! Oh, those two have got a nerve! But they know their way around all right … if they didn’t, we should all have been broke long ago. We were up to our ears in debt … Even the priests didn’t want to know about it. What do you think of that?’

  ‘Well, Monsieur Xavier, I think it’s a very funny way to treat your own family.’

  ‘What do you expect, my love …? I’m an anarchist … I’m fed up with the family.’

  While we were talking he had succeeded in undoing my blouse, an old one of Madame’s that suited me down to the ground.

  ‘Now, Monsieur Xavier, you little devil! … That’s very naughty of you,’ I exclaimed, pretending to defend myself just for the look of things.

  ‘Shut up,’ he retorted, gently putting his hand over my mouth. Then, throwing me back on the bed, he whispered, ‘Oh, how lovely you smell … Just like Mama, you little whore.’

  Later that morning I noticed that Madame was at particular pains to be nice to me.

  ‘I am very satisfied with your work here,’ she said. ‘I’m going to raise your wages ten francs a week.’

  If she’s going to give me a rise every time this happens, I thought to myself, I shan’t be doing so badly … Most becoming, in fact …’

  And yet, whenever I think of those days, I, too, am absolutely fed up. Monsieur Xavier’s passion, or rather his weaknesses, for me, did not last long. He soon began to grow tired of me; and, in any case, my influence over him was never strong enough to keep him at home. Often, when I came into his bedroom in the morning, the bed was still neatly turned down and had not been slept in … He had spent the night on the tiles. The cook knew what she was talking about when she said he preferred tarts. But, on such mornings, the thought that he was still carrying on as usual, still enjoying the same pleasures, would give me a sudden pang of unhappiness, and for the rest of the day I used to be miserable.

  The trouble was, Monsieur Xavier simply had no feelings … There was nothing the least poetical about him, like Monsieur George … Apart from sex, I scarcely existed for him, and as soon as it was over, he was off … without another thought for me. He never once expressed the slightest feeling for me, and he never used to talk to me nicely, like lovers do in novels and on the stage. Besides, our tastes were completely different … He didn’t like flowers, for instance, except for the huge carnation he used to wear in his buttonhole … Yet it’s so lovely, not just thinking of love-making all the time, but lying beside one another, whispering secrets, kissing, staring into one another’s eyes for what seems like an eternity. But men are too coarse, they don’t enjoy such things … and it’s a great pity … As for Monsieur Xavier, the only things he enjoyed were vice and debauchery. Nothing else about love interested him …

  ‘It’s such a bore, you know … I’m absolutely fed up with poetry, and as to day-dreaming, I leave that to Papa …’

  Immediately he was satisfied, I just became something quite impersonal … a servant, to be ordered about and bullied, with all the unconcern of an employer and the cynical impertinence of a street arab. For him, there was very little distinction between a beast of burden and a beast of love … Often he would say to me, with a smile at the corners of his lips that hurt and humiliated me:

  ‘What about Papa? Is it true, you haven’t slept with him yet? You amaze me.’

  Once, when my tears were choking me so that I could no longer hide them, he lost his temper with me:

  ‘Oh no, really! This is the absolute limit. If we’re going to have nothing but tears and scenes, we may as well pack it up … I’m fed up with such nonsense.’

  But I am not like that. When I am still under the spell of happiness, I like to hold the man who has given it me in my arms as long as I can … After the shock of passion, I feel the need—an immense, imperious need—for relaxation … just to lie there in a chaste embrace, exchanging kisses that are no longer a savage rending of the flesh, but an ideal, spiritually satisfying caress … I need to escape from the hell of sex, the frenzy of orgasm, into the paradise of ecstasy … into the delicious plentitude, the exquisite silence of ecstasy … But Monsieur Xavier was fed up with ecstasy. No sooner had he finished making love, than he tore himself from my arms, as though my embraces and my kisses had become physically distasteful to him. It was as though we had never been, if only for a moment, a part of one another; as if our sex, our mouths, our souls, had not momentarily been fused in the same cry, the same oblivion, the same exquisite death. And if I tried to keep him near me, holding him against my breast and clinging to him with my thighs, he would break free, brutally pushing me away, and leap out of bed … ‘No, really, you’re impossible’ … and he would light a cigarette …

  What distressed me most of all, was to realize that I left not the slightest trace of affection or tenderness in his heart, although I submitted to every sensual caprice, accepting, even outstripping, his wildest fantasies … and, God knows, some of them were as frightening as they were extraordinary. For though he was still only a kid, he was already utterly vicious, worse than an old man, more inventive and ferocious in his depravity than an impotent old man or a satanic priest.

  Still, I think I might have gone on loving him, the little swine, and, despite everything, might even have become stupidly devoted to him … For, even now, I still can’t help feeling some regret, when I think of that cheeky, cruel, pretty little phiz of his, and his perfumed body, and his sheer lechery, that sometimes horrified you, sometimes swept you off your feet. And I can still sometimes taste on my mouth, that has since been so often bruised by other men’s kisses, the burning, acid savour of his lips … Oh, Monsieur Xavier, Monsieur Xavier!

  One evening, when he had come home to change for dinner—and heavens, how lovely he used to look in evening dress!—while I was laying out his clothes in the dressing-room, he suddenly asked me, without the slightest hesitation or embarrassment, for all the world as though he were asking me to bring him some hot water:

  ‘Do you happen to have a hundred francs you could lend me? … I simply must have them this evening, but I’ll let you have them back tomorrow.’

  As it happened, Madame had paid me that very morning, though whether or not he knew this I couldn’t say.

  ‘All I’ve got, I’m afraid, is ninety francs,’ I replied, feeling a little ashamed, partly at the thought of him borrowing from me, but mainly I think, because I could not let him have as much as he wanted.

  ‘That’ll do,’ said he. ‘Let me have the ninety francs, and I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

  He took the money, and having thanked me so casually that I was absolutely shocked, he then insolently held out his foot and brutally ordered me to tie up his shoe. ‘And be quick about it,’ he added, ‘I am in a hurry.’

  I looked at him sadly:

  ‘Then you won’t be dining at home this evening, Monsieur Xavier?’

  ‘No, I’m having dinner in town … Hurry up!’

  And, as I tied his shoes, I wailed:

  ‘So you’re going on the spree again, with that filthy woman of yours? And that means you’ll stay out all night, leaving me here to cry my eyes out, I suppose? It’s not very nice of you, Monsieur Xavier.’

  ‘If you’re just saying that simply because you’ve lent me ninety francs,’ he retorted, in a hard, malicious tone of voice, ‘you can jolly well have them back … Here, take them …’

  ‘No, no,’ I sighed, ‘you know it wasn’t for that.’

  ‘Well then, leave me alone, for God’s sake.’

  H
e quickly finished dressing, and went off without kissing me or even saying good-bye.

  Next day, he made no suggestion of repaying me, and I didn’t like to refer to the subject. I was glad that he had accepted something from me … Oh, I know there are women who will kill themselves with work, who will sell themselves to the first passer-by in the street, who are ready to steal or even to kill, if only they can get money for the man they are in love with, so that he’ll make a bit of a fuss of them … But had I really sunk to this? It is difficult to say … With men, there are times when I feel myself suddenly go all soft, soft as butter … lose all my will-power and all my courage … and just behave like a cow … Yes, like an absolute cow!

  It was not long before Madame’s attitude towards me changed. Instead of being nice to me, she became hard, exacting and cantankerous. I was a little idiot … I never did anything right … I was clumsy, dirty, badly brought up, forgetful and a thief … And her voice, which to begin with had been so gentle and friendly, was now as sour as vinegar; and when she told me to do anything, curt and humiliating … No more underclothes sessions; no more cold cream and rice powder; no more of those feminine confidences and intimate suggestions which, in the early days, I had found so embarrassing that I used to wonder, as indeed I still do, whether Madame didn’t really prefer women … And as for the ambiguous friendship that had sprung up between us, which I had always felt to be fundamentally fake, since it had made me lose all respect for a mistress who was simply trying to reduce me to her own level of depravity, that, too, was over and done with … Knowing all about their preposterous goings-on, both in public and behind the scenes, I sometimes used to let myself go, and we would end up by bawling each other out like a couple of fishwives.