Read Online The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau - Free Book Online

menu for dinner, ma’am? If you were to order highly spiced dishes, for instance, lobsters and that sort of thing?’
    ‘No, no,’ she would say, shaking her head sadly. ‘It’s nothing to do with that. It’s simply that he doesn’t love me any longer.’
    Then, shyly, looking at me not with hatred but imploringly, she would ask: ‘Célestine, I want you to be quite frank with me … Has the master ever tried to get you in a corner? Has he ever kissed you? Has he ever …’
    ‘What an idea!…’
    ‘But tell me, Célestine, be honest with me.’
    ‘Certainly not, ma’am,’ I exclaimed. ‘The master has no time for such things! Besides, do you really think, ma’am, that I would do anything to harm you?’
    ‘But you must tell me,’ she begged. ‘You’re so beautiful, your eyes are so full of love, you must have such a lovely body.’
    Then she would make me feel her breasts, her arms, her thighs, her legs, comparing every part of our two bodies so completely shamelessly that, blushing with embarrassment, I began to wonder whether this was not just a trick on her part, whether behind the grief of a deserted woman she had not been concealing a desire for me. And all the time she kept on murmuring: ‘Oh God, God, it’s not as though I was an old woman. I’m not ugly, I’m not fat, my flesh is still soft and firm. Oh, if you only knew. I feel so much love. My heart’s full of love!’
    Often she would burst into tears, and throwing herself on to the sofa, her head buried in a cushion to stifle her tears, would stammer: ‘Oh, never love anyone, Célestine, never love anyone. It will only bring you unhappiness.’
    Once, when she was crying more pitifully than usual, I said to her sharply: ‘If I were in your place, ma’am, I’d go and find myself a lover. Madame is too beautiful to be left like this …’
    My words seemed to terrify her:
    ‘Be quiet, oh, will you be quiet!’ she exclaimed.
    I insisted: ‘But all Madame’s friends have lovers …’
    ‘Will you be quiet. Don’t speak to me of such things.’
    ‘But if Madame feels so loving …’ and with calm impertinence I mentioned the name of a very elegant young man who often visited her: ‘Oh, he’s a duck of a man! Why you have only to look at him to see how skilful and considerate he’d be with a woman!’
    ‘No, be quiet. You don’t know what you’re saying.’
    ‘As you wish, ma’am. I was only thinking of your good.’
    And persisting in her dream, while the master still sat in the library adding up figures and drawing circles, she would repeat: ‘But maybe tonight he will come.’
    Every morning, over breakfast in the servants’ hall, this was the sole subject of conversation. They would ask me for the latest news, and the answer was always the same: ‘Nothing doing!’
    You can just imagine what an opportunity it was for all kinds of coarse jokes and obscene allusions. They even used to lay bets as to when the master would pay her a visit.
    It was after one of these futile discussions with the mistress, in which I always seemed to be in the wrong, that I gave her notice. I did it in a disgusting way, throwing up in her face, her poor bewildered face, all the poor little stories, all the intimate misfortunes, all the confidences, through which she had exposed her heart to me, her charming, plaintive, babyish little heart, so hungry with desire. Yes, everything. It was like throwing mud at her. Worse than that, I accused her of the filthiest kinds of debauchery, of every sort of ignoble passion. I really behaved horribly.
    I don’t know how it is, but there are times when I suddenly feel within myself a kind of need, a mania, to behave outrageously … A perversity, that drives me to turn the simplest things into irreparable wrongs. I can’t help it … even when I am aware that I am acting against my own interests, that I shall only do myself harm. On this occasion I went much further. A few days after leaving Madame’s