I shall do stupid housework, wearisome sewing, and nothing else.
Ah! when I remember the places where I have served, that makes my situation still sadder, more intolerably sad.
And I have a great desire to go away,—to make my bow once for all to this country of savages. _____
Just now I met Monsieur on the stairs.
He was starting for a hunt. Monsieur looked at me with a salacious air. Again he asked me:
"Well, Celestine, are you getting accustomed to the place?"
Decidedly, it is a mania with him.
I answered: "I do not know yet, Monsieur." Then, with effrontery:
"And Monsieur, is he getting accustomed here?"
Monsieur burst out laughing. Monsieur takes a joke well.
Monsieur is really good-natured.
"You must get accustomed, Celestine. You must get accustomed. Sapristi!"
I was in a humor for boldness.
Again I answered: "I will try, Monsieur,—with Monsieur's aid."
I think that Monsieur was going to say something very stiff to me.
His eyes shone like two coals. But Madame appeared at the top of the stairs. Monsieur was off in his direction, I in mine.
It was a pity.
This evening, through the door of the salon, I heard Madame saying to Monsieur, in the amiable tone that you can imagine:
"I wish no familiarity with my servants."
Her servants?
Are not Madame's servants Monsieur's servants?
Well, indeed! _____
III
September 18.
This morning (Sunday) I went to mass.
I have already declared that, without being pious, I have religion all the same.
Say and do what you like, religion is always religion.
The rich, perhaps, can get along without it, but it is necessary for people like us.
I know very well that there are individuals who make use of it in a rather queer fashion,—that many priests and good sisters scarcely do it honor. But never mind.
When one is unhappy,—and, in our calling, we get more than our share of unhappiness,—it is the only thing that will soothe you. Only that, and love.
Yes, but love, that is another sort of consolation. Consequently, even in impious houses, I never missed mass.
In the first place, mass is an excursion, a distraction, time gained from the daily ennui of the household.
And, above all, we meet comrades, hear stories, and form acquaintances.
Ah! if, on going out of the chapel of the Assumptionists, I had wished to listen to the good-looking old gentlemen who whispered psalms of a curious sort in my ears, perhaps I should not be here to-day.
To-day the weather is improved.
There is a beautiful sun,—one of those misty suns that make walking agreeable and sadness less burdensome.
I know not why, but, under the influence of this blue and gold morning, I have something like gaiety in my heart.
We are about a mile from the church.
The way leading to it is a pleasant one,—a little path winding between hedges.
In spring it must be full of flowers, wild cherry trees, and the hawthorns that smell so good. I love the hawthorns.
They remind me of things when I was a little girl. Otherwise the country is like the country everywhere else; there is nothing astonishing about it. It is a very wide valley, and then, yonder, at the end of the valley, there are hills. In the valley there is a river, on the hills there is a forest; all covered with a veil of fog, transparent and gilded, which hides the landscape too much to suit me. Oddly enough, I keep my fidelity to nature as it is in Brittany.
I have it in my blood.
Nowhere else does it seem to me as beautiful; nowhere else does it speak better to my soul.
Even among the richest and most fertile fields of Normandy I am homesick for the moors, and for that tragic and splendid sea where I was born.
And this recollection, suddenly called up, casts a cloud of melancholy into the gaiety of this delightful morning.
On the way I meet women and women.
With prayer-books under their arms, they, too, are going to mass,—cooks, chambermaids, and barn-yard scullions, thick-set and clumsy, and with the slow and swaying gait of animals.
How queerly they are rigged out, in their holiday garb,—perfect mops.
They smell powerfully of the country, and it is easy to see that they have not served in Paris.
They look at me with curiosity,—a curiosity at once distrustful and sympathetic.