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

another any more. For one thing, Madame, who has something wrong with her inside and cannot have children, just won’t hear of sleeping with him, and that almost drives him out of his mind. On this particular subject there’s a good story going the rounds.
    One day, at confession, Madame explained the situation to the priest, and asked him if it would be all right for them to ‘cheat’.
    ‘It depends what you mean by cheat, my child?’ the priest answered.
    ‘Well, I don’t exactly know, Father,’ she said, highly embarrassed. ‘But it seems there are certain caresses …’
    ‘Certain caresses? But my child, surely you know that such caresses are a mortal sin?’
    ‘That’s just why I’m asking the Church’s permission, Father.’
    ‘Yes, yes, that’s all very well … But how often?’
    ‘My husband is a very robust man, a healthy man, Father. Perhaps twice a week …’
    ‘Twice a week? That’s much too often … sheer debauchery. However robust a man may be, he doesn’t need certain … certain caresses twice a week.’
    Then after pondering the question for a moment or two, he added: ‘All right then, I will authorize it twice a week … but on certain conditions. Firstly, that you yourself get no pleasure from it …’
    ‘Oh, but I swear I shan’t, Father!’
    ‘Secondly, that you donate the sum of 200 francs every year to the Chapel of the Blessed Virgin.’
    ‘Two hundred francs?’ gasped Madame, ‘just for that? Why, it’s out of the question!’
    And she has never bothered her confessor again.
    The draper’s wife, who told me this story, concluded by saying: ‘How on earth can such a decent man as Monsieur Lanlaire be such a coward with his wife, when she refuses to give him, not only money, but even pleasure? If it was me, I’d soon bring her to her senses … and that’s a fact!’
    So what happens? When Monsieur Lanlaire, who is a vigorous man and as fond of a bit of stuff as the next, wants to stand himself a little treat in that line, or even just to give some poor creature a present, he is reduced to the most ridiculous expedients … every kind of wangling and fiddling. And, when Madame finds out, it results in the most terrible scenes, rows that often go on for months at a time. So the master wanders about the countryside like a madman, waving his arms in the air, grinding clods of earth under his heel and talking to himself, come wind, rain or snow. And then, when he gets home in the evening, he’s more timid than ever … more scared, more obsequious, more utterly crushed.
    The most curious, and also the saddest, part of this story is that, despite all the recriminations of the draper’s wife, despite all the infamous revelations, all the shameful filth that is hawked about from mouth to mouth, from shop to shop and house to house, I feel that the people of the village envy the Lanlaires even more than they look down on them. Despite their criminal idleness and all the harm they do to society, despite everything that is crushed beneath the weight of their monstrous wealth, it is precisely their money that gives them a halo of respectability, even of importance. People are prepared to bow down to them, to greet them more readily … and how complacently they speak of this wretched dump, where they live in such spiritual squalor, as The Castle. If a visitor were to ask what places of interest there were to see in the neighbourhood, I feel convinced that even the draper’s wife, despite all her hatred of them, would reply: ‘We have a fine church and a fine fountain, but best of all, we have the Lanlaires, the Lanlaires who are worth a million francs and live in a castle. They are atrocious people, but we are very proud of them.’
    The worship of money is the lowest of all human emotions, but it is shared not only by the bourgeoisie but also by the great majority of us … little people, humble people, even those who are practically penniless. And I, with all my