You should wait a little before reading him! Huysmans! Well, he is a little stiff in his expressions,—yes, indeed, very stiff,—but he is orthodox."
And he said to me further:
"Yes ... Ah! you do mad things with your body! That is not good.
No, indeed, that is always bad. But, sin for sin, it is better to sin with your masters, when they are pious persons, than with people of your own condition. It is less serious, less irritating to the good God. And perhaps these people have dispensations. Many have dispensations."
As I named M. Xavier and his father, he cried:
"No names. I do not ask you for names. Never tell me names. I do not belong to the police. Besides, those are rich and respectable people whom you have just named,—extremely religious people. Consequently you are wrong; you are rebellious against morality and against society."
These ridiculous conversations considerably cooled my religious zeal, my ardor for repentance.
The work, too, annoyed me.
It made me homesick for my own calling.
I felt impatient desires to escape from this prison, to return to the privacies of dressing-rooms.
I sighed for the closets full of sweet-smelling linen, the wardrobes stuffed with silks, satins, and velvets, so smooth to the touch, and the bath-rooms where white flesh is lathered with oily soaps.
And the stories of the servants' hall, and the unforeseen adventures, and the evenings on the stairs and in the chambers!
It is really curious; when I have a place, these things disgust me, but, when I am out of a place, I miss them.
I was tired also, excessively tired, sickened in fact, from having eaten for a week nothing but preserves made out of spoiled currants, of which the good sisters had purchased a large quantity in the Levallois market.
Anything that the holy women could rescue from the refuse-heap was good enough for us.
What completed my irritation was the evident, the persistent effrontery with which we were exploited.
Their game was a very simple one, and they took little pains to conceal it.
They found places only for those girls of whom they could make no use themselves.
Those from whom they could reap any profit whatever they held as prisoners, taking advantage of their talents, of their strength, and of their simplicity.
As the height of Christian charity, they had found a way of having servants who paid for the privilege of working, and whom they stripped, without remorse and with inconceivable cynicism, of their modest resources and their little savings, after making a profit out of their labor. And the costs kept running on.
I complained, at first feebly, and then more forcibly, that they had not once summoned me into the reception-room, but to all my complaints the hypocrites answered:
"A little patience, my dear child! We are planning to get you an excellent place, my dear child; for you we desire an exceptional place.
We know what sort of a place you should have.
As yet not one has offered itself such as we wish for you, and such as you deserve."
Days and weeks passed. The places were never good enough, never exceptional enough for me. And the costs kept running on.
Although there was a watcher in the dormitory, the things that went on every night were enough to make one shudder.
As soon as the watcher had finished her round, and every one seemed to be asleep, you could see white forms arise and glide about among the beds.
The good sisters, holy women, closed their eyes that they might see nothing, stopped up their ears that they might hear nothing. Wishing to avoid scandal, they tolerated horrors of which they feigned ignorance. And the costs kept running on.
Fortunately, when I was at the very depth of my ennui, I was delighted by the entrance into the establishment of a little friend, Clemence, whom I called Clecle, and whom I had known in a place where I had worked in the Rue de l'Universite. Clecle was a charming pink blonde, extremely gay and lively, and very fly.
She laughed at everything, accepted everything, and was contented everywhere.
Devoted and faithful, she knew but one pleasure,—that of being useful to others.
Vicious to the marrow of her bones, her vice had nothing repugnant about it, it was so gay, artless, and natural.
She bore vice as a plant bears flowers, as a cherry-tree bears cherries.
Her pretty, bird-like chatter sometimes made me forget my feeling of weariness, and put to sleep my tendency to rebel.
Our two beds were next to each other; and one night she told me, in a funny sort of whisper, that she had just had a place in the house of a magistrate at Versailles.
"Fancy, there were nothing but animals in the den,—cats, three parrots, a monkey, and two dogs. And they all had to be taken care of. Nothing was good enough for them. We were fed on old scraps, the same as in this box here. But they had what was left over of the poultry; they had cream, and cakes, and mineral water, my dear! Yes, the dirty beasts drank nothing but Evian water, because of an epidemic of typhoid fever that was raging at Versailles. In the winter Madame had the cheek to take the stove out of my chamber, and put it in the room where the monkey and the cats slept. Would you believe it? I detested them, especially one of the dogs, a horrible old pug, that was always sniffing at my skirts, in spite of the kicks that I gave it. The other morning Madame caught me whipping it. You can imagine the scene. She showed me the door in double-quick time." Oh! this Clecle! how agreeable and amusing she was! _____
People have no idea of all the annoyances to which domestics are subjected, or of the fierce and eternal exploitation under which they suffer.
Now the masters, now the keepers of employment-bureaus, now the charitable institutions, to say nothing of the comrades, some of whom are capable of terrible meanness.
And nobody takes any interest in anybody else.
Each one lives, grows fat, and is entertained by the misery of some one poorer than himself.
Scenes change, settings are shifted, you traverse social surroundings that are different and even hostile, but everywhere you find the same appetites and passions.
In the cramped apartments of the bourgeois and in the elegant mansion of the banker you meet the same filth, and come in contact with the inexorable.
The result of it all, for a girl like me, is that she is conquered in advance, wherever she may go and whatever she may do.
The poor are the human manure in which grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which the rich reap, and which they misuse so cruelly against us. They pretend that there is no more slavery. Oh! what nonsense? And what are domestics, then, if not slaves?
Slaves in fact, with all that slavery involves of moral vileness, inevitable corruption, and hate-engendering rebellion. Servants learn vice in the houses of their masters.
Entering upon their duties pure and innocent,—some of them,—they are quickly made rotten by contact with habits of depravity.
They see nothing but vice, they breathe nothing but vice, they touch nothing but vice. Consequently, from day to day, from minute to minute, they get more and more used to it, being defenceless against it, being obliged, on the contrary, to serve it, to care for it, to respect it.
And their revolt arises from the fact that they are powerless to satisfy it, and to break down all the obstacles in the way of its natural expansion.
Oh! it is extraordinary. They demand of us all the virtues, complete resignation, all the sacrifices, all the heroisms, and only those vices that flatter the vanity of the masters, and which yield them a profit. And all this in return for contempt and wages ranging from thirty-five to ninety francs a month. No, it is too much!
Add that we live in perpetual distress of mind, in a perpetual struggle between the ephemeral semi-luxury of the places that we fill, and the anguish which the loss of these places causes us. Add that we are continually conscious of the wounding suspicions that follow us everywhere,—bolting doors, padlocking drawers, marking bottles, numbering cakes and prunes, and continually putting us to shame by invasive examination of our hands, our pockets, and our trunks.