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. The too thin partitions, made of too dry planks, make the chambers as sonorous as the inside of a violin. Oh! it is all hollow and provincial. It surely is not furnished in the Paris fashion. In all the rooms old mahogany, old worm-eaten stuffs, old worn-out faded rugs, and arm-chairs and sofas, ridiculously stiff, without springs, worm-eaten, and rickety. How they must grind one's shoulders! Really, I, who am so fond of light-colored hangings, broad elastic divans, where one can stretch voluptuously on heaps of cushions, and all these pretty modern furnishings, so luxurious, so rich, and so gay,—I feel utterly saddened by the gloomy sadness of these. And I am afraid that I shall never get accustomed to such an absence of comfort, to such a lack of elegance, to so much old dust and so many dead forms.
Nor is Madame dressed in Parisian fashion. She is lacking in style, and is unacquainted with the great dressmakers. She is somewhat of a fright, as they say. Although she shows a certain pretension in her costumes, she is at least ten years behind the fashion. And what a fashion! Still, she would not be bad-looking, if she chose not to be; at least, she would not be too bad-looking. Her worst fault is that she awakens in you no sympathy,—that she is a woman in nothing. But she has regular features, pretty hair naturally blonde, and a beautiful skin; in fact, she has too much color, as if she were suffering from some internal malady. I know this type of woman, and I am not to be deceived by the brilliancy of their complexion. They are pink on the surface, yes, but within they are rotten. They cannot stand up straight, they cannot walk, they cannot live, except by the aid of girdles, trusses, pessaries, and a whole collection of secret horrors and complex mechanisms. Which does not prevent them from making a show in society. Yes, indeed, they are coquettish, if you please; they flirt in the corners, they exhibit their painted flesh, they ogle, they wiggle; and yet they are fit for nothing but preservation in alcohol. Oh! misfortune! One has but little satisfaction with them, I assure you, and it is not always agreeable to be in their service.
I do not know whether it is from temperament or from organic indisposition, but, judging from the expression of Madame's face, her severe gestures, and the stiff bending of her body, she cares nothing at all for love. She has the sharpness and sourness of an old maid, and her whole person seems dried up and mummified,—a rare thing with blondes. Not such women as Madame does beautiful music, like that of "Faust",—oh! that "Faust"!—cause to fall with languor and swoon voluptuously in the arms of a handsome man. Oh, no indeed! She does not belong to that class of very ugly women into whose faces the ardor of sex sometimes puts so much of radiant life, so much of seductive beauty. After all, though, one cannot trust too securely in airs like those of Madame. I have known women of the most severe and crabbed type, who drove away all thought of desire and love, and who yet were famous rovers.
Although Madame forces herself to be amiable, she surely is not up to date, like some that I have seen. I believe her to be very wicked, very spying, very fault-finding,—a dirty character and a wicked heart. She must be continually at people's heels, pestering them in all ways. "Do you know how to do this?" and "Do you know how to do that?" or again: "Are you in the habit of breaking things? Are you careful? Have you a good memory? Are you orderly?" There is no end to it. And also: "Are you clean? I am very particular about cleanliness; I pass over many things, but I insist upon cleanliness." Does she take me for a farm girl, a peasant, a country servant? Cleanliness? Oh! I know that chestnut. They all say that. And often, when one goes to the bottom of things, when one turns up their skirts and examines their linen, how filthy they are! Sometimes it is disgusting enough to turn one's stomach.