Provided that to-morrow, and pursued even here by that pitiless mischance which never leaves me, I am not forced once more to quit my place.
That would annoy me.
For some time I have had pains in my loins, a feeling of weariness in my whole body; my stomach is becoming impaired, my memory is weakening; I am growing more irritable and nervous.
Just now, when looking in the glass, I discovered that my face had a really tired look, and that my complexion—that amber complexion of which I was so proud—had taken on an almost ashen hue. Can I be growing old already?
I do not wish to grow old yet.
In Paris it is difficult to take care of one's self.
There is no time for anything.
Life there is too feverish, too tumultuous; one comes continually in contact with too many people, too many things, too many pleasures, too much of the unexpected. But you have to go on, just the same.
Here it is calm. And what silence!
The air that one breathes must be healthy and good.
Ah! if, at the risk of being bored, I could but rest a little.
In the first place, I have no confidence.
Certainly Madame is nice enough with me.
She has seen fit to pay me some compliments on my appearance, and to congratulate herself on the reports that she has received concerning me.
Oh! her head, if she knew that these reports are false, or at least that they were given simply to oblige! What especially astonishes her is my elegance.
And then, as a rule, they are nice the first day, these camels.
While all is new, all is beautiful.
That is a well-known song. Yes, and the next day the air changes into another one equally well known.
Especially as Madame has very cold, hard eyes, which do not please me,—the eyes of a miser, full of keen suspicion and spying inquiry.
Nor do I like her dry and too thin lips, which seem to be covered with a whitish crust, or her curt, cutting speech, which turns an amiable word almost into an insult or a humiliation.
When, in questioning me concerning this or that, concerning my aptitudes and my past, she looked at me with that tranquil and sly impudence of an old customs official which they all have, I said to myself:
"There is no mistake about it. Here is another one who is bound to put everything under lock and key, to count every evening her grapes and her lumps of sugar, and to put marks on the bottles.
Oh! yes, indeed, we change and change, but we find always the same thing." Nevertheless, it will be necessary to see, and not rely on this first impression.
Among so many mouths that have spoken to me, among so many looks that have searched my soul, I shall find perhaps, some day,—who knows?—a friendly mouth, a sympathetic look. It costs me nothing to hope.
As soon as I had arrived, still under the deadening influence of four hours in a third-class railway carriage, and before any one in the kitchen had even thought of offering me a slice of bread, Madame took me over the house, from cellar to garret, in order to immediately familiarize me with my duties.
Oh! she does not waste her time, or mine. How big this house is!
And how many things and corners it contains!
Oh! no, thank you, to keep it in order as it should be, four servants would not suffice.
Besides the ground floor, which in itself is very important,—for there are two little pavilions, in the form of a terrace, which constitute additions and continuations,—it has two stories, in which I shall have to be forever going up and down, since Madame, who stays in a little room near the dining-room, has had the ingenious idea of placing the linen-room, where I am to work, at the top of the house, by the side of our chambers.
And cupboards, and bureaus, and drawers, and store-rooms, and litters of all sorts,—if you like these things, there are plenty of them.
Never shall I find myself in all this.
At every minute, in showing me something, Madame said to me:
"You will have to be careful about this, my girl. This is very pretty, my girl.
This is very rare, my girl.
This is very expensive, my girl."
She could not, then, call me by my name, instead of saying all the time, "My girl," this, "My girl," that, in that tone of wounding domination which discourages the best wills and straightway puts such a distance, so much hatred, between our mistresses and us?
Do I call her "little mother"?
And then Madame has always on her lips the words "very expensive."
It is provoking. Everything that belongs to her, even paltry articles that cost four sous, are "very expensive."
One has no idea where the vanity of the mistress of a house can hide itself. It is really pitiful.
In explaining to me the working of an oil lamp, which in no way differed from all other lamps, she said to me:
"My girl, you know that this lamp is very expensive, and that it can be repaired only in England.
Take care of it, as if it were the apple of your eye."
Oh! the cheek that they have, and the fuss that they make about nothing!
And when I think that it is all done just to humiliate you, to astonish you!
And the house is not so much after all.
There is really no reason to be so proud of it.
The exterior, to be sure, with the great clusters of trees that sumptuously frame it and the gardens that descend to the river in gentle slopes, ornamented with broad rectangular lawns, gives an impression of some importance.
But within it is sad, old, rickety, and has a musty smell. I do not understand how they can live in it.
Nothing but rats' nests, break-neck wooden stairways, whose warped steps tremble and creak beneath your feet; low and dark passage-ways, whose floors, instead of being covered with soft carpets, consist of badly-laid tiles, of a faded red color, and glazed, glazed, slippery, slippery.