Free The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau Page B

smell … A mixture of manure, cowsheds, earth, dirty straw and wet leather … A funny kind of incense! Really, it’s awful the way these country people are brought up.
    It seemed as though the service would never end and I was beginning to get bored. What worried me most was finding myself among such commonplace, ugly people, who scarcely seemed to notice me. Nothing nice to look at, no well-dressed women to take my thoughts off things and cheer me up. I’d never realized so clearly just how much elegance really means to me. Instead of being stimulated, as they always were in Paris, all my senses protested. In an attempt to distract myself I carefully studied the movements of the priest. But no thank you! He was just a strapping great fellow, still quite young, with a coarse, brick-red face. With his tousled hair, great hungry jaw and greedy lips, and little obscene eyes with black circles under them, it didn’t take me long to place him. He enjoyed his food all right … and in the confessional, fumbling at your petticoat and making dirty remarks! Noticing that I was watching him, Rose leaned over to me and said beneath her breath:
    ‘It’s the new curate … I can recommend him. There’s no one like him for hearing confessions. The rector’s certainly a very good man, but most people find him too strict … Whereas the new curate …’
    She made a clucking noise with her tongue and returned to her prayers, her head bowed over the back of a chair. Well, he certainly wouldn’t suit me, this new curate, with his dirty, brutal appearance. You would take him for a carter rather than a priest. What I need is a little delicacy, a little poetry, something other-worldly … and nice, white hands. I like men who are gentle and stylish, men like Monsieur Jean.
    After the service, Rose invited me to go with her to the grocer’s, explaining to me in a mysterious way that it was just as well to keep in with her, and that all the servants round about curried favour with her.
    Another little dumpling—this is certainly the place for fat women—she had a freckled face and lustreless, tow-coloured hair, so thin that you could see half of her scalp through it, and done up in a ridiculous little bun on top of her head. At the slightest movement, her bosom seemed to flow beneath her brown cloth bodice like liquid in a bottle. She had red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes, and a mouth so ugly that every smile was a grimace . .. Rose introduced me:
    ‘This is the new maid at The Priory, Madame Gouin. I brought her to see you …’
    The grocer’s wife scrutinized me closely, and I noticed that her gaze was fixed with embarrassing persistence on my belly. She said in a toneless voice:
    ‘You must make yourself at home here, Mademoiselle. A fine-looking girl … A Parisian I wouldn’t wonder?’
    ‘That’s right, Madame Gouin, I come from Paris.’
    ‘Obviously, you can tell straight away. You don’t have to look twice to see that. I like Parisian women, they know what life is. I myself was in service in Paris when I was young. I used to work for a midwife in rue Guénégaud, a Madame Tripier … I daresay you know her?’
    ‘No …’
    ‘Oh well, never mind. After all that was a long time ago. But come in, Mademoiselle Célestine.’
    She ushered us ceremoniously into a room behind the shop, where four other servants were already seated round a table.
    ‘I’m afraid you’re in for trouble, my poor girl,’ murmured the grocer’s wife, offering me a seat. ‘It’s not just because they’ve stopped dealing with me, but I can assure you that The Priory is a hellish place … hellish. Isn’t that true?’ she said, turning to the others.
    ‘It certainly is!’ they replied unanimously, All with exactly the same gestures and the same expressions on their faces.
    ‘Thank you very much, but I certainly don’t want to serve people who haggle over every little thing … always screeching like so many polecats that you’re robbing and