"What's that you say?"
"I say nothing."
"It is lucky.
And furthermore, I forbid you to walk with M. Mauger's servant.
She is very bad company for you. See, everything is late this morning, because of you."
I say to myself:
"Zut! zut! and zut!
You make me tired. I will speak to whom I like. I will see anyone that it pleases me to see. You shall lay down no law for me, camel!"
I need only to see once more her wicked eyes, and hear her shrill voice and her tyrannical orders, in order to lose at once the bad impression, the impression of disgust, that I brought back from the mass, from the grocer, and from Rose.
Rose and the grocer are right; the haberdasher also is right; all of them are right.
And I promise myself that I will see Rose; that I will see her often; that I will return to the grocer's; that I will make this dirty haberdasher my best friend,—since Madame forbids me to do so.
And I repeat internally, with savage energy:
"Camel! Camel! Camel!"
But I would have been much more relieved if I had had the courage to hurl and shout this insult full in her face. _____
During the day, after lunch, Monsieur and Madame went out driving. The dressing-room, the chambers, Monsieur's desk, all the closets, all the cupboards, all the sideboards, were locked.
What did I tell you?
Ah, well, thank you! no means of reading a letter, or of making up any little packages.
So I have remained in my room. I have written to my mother and to Monsieur Jean, and I have read "En Famille."
What a delightful book!
And how well written!
It is queer, all the same; I am very fond of hearing dirty things, but I do not like to read them.
I like only the books that make me cry. _____
For dinner they had boiled beef and broth.
It seemed to me that Monsieur and Madame were very cool toward each other.
Monsieur read the "Petit Journal" with provoking ostentation. He crumpled the paper, rolling all the time his kind, comical, gentle eyes.
Even when he is in anger, Monsieur's eyes remain gentle and timid.
At last, doubtless to start the conversation, Monsieur, with his nose still buried in his paper, exclaimed:
"Hello! another woman cut to pieces!"
Madame made no answer.
Very stiff, very straight, austere in her black silk dress, her forehead wrinkled, her look stern, she did not cease her dreaming. About what?
It is, perhaps, because of me that Madame is sulky with Monsieur. _____
IV
September 26.
For a week I have been unable to write a single line in my diary.
When it comes night, I am tired, exhausted, at the end of my strength.
I think of nothing but going to bed and to sleep.
To sleep!
If I could always sleep!
Oh! what a shabby place, My God!
You can have no idea of it!
For a yes, for a no, Madame makes you run up and down the two cursed flights of stairs. One has not even time to sit down in the linen-room and breathe a little, when ... drinn!... drinn!... drinn!... one has to get up and start again. It makes no difference if one is not feeling well, drinn!... drinn!... drinn!
In these days I have pains in my loins that bend me in two, and gripe my stomach, and almost make me cry out. That cuts no figure; drinn!... drinn!... drinn!...
One has no time to be sick; one has not the right to suffer.
Suffering is a master's luxury.
We, we must walk, and fast, and forever; walk at the risk of falling. Drinn!... drinn!... drinn!...
And if one is a little slow in coming at the sound of the bell, then there are reproaches and angry scenes.
"Well, what are you about?
You do not hear, then?
Are you deaf?
I have been ringing for three hours. It is getting to be very provoking."