The Diary of a Chambermaid Read Online Free PDF

some organic indisposition, I should be very surprised if Madame was much good in bed. You can tell from the expression on her face, from her awkward gestures and the stiff movements of her body that she hasn’t an idea about making love … and she certainly wouldn’t know what it was to really let herself go. Her whole body has that sour, dried-up mummified quality that one finds in elderly virgins, though it’s unusual in blondes … She certainly isn’t the sort of woman you could imagine passing out at the sound of music, even music as beautiful as Faust, or fainting voluptuously into the arms of a good-looking man. Not on your life! She isn’t, even, one of those very ugly women, whose faces are sometimes lit up by sexual passion with such radiant vitality and seductive beauty … Still, you can’t always judge by appearances. Some of the grumpiest, most severe-looking women I’ve ever seen, women you would think were immune from the slightest feeling of love or desire, turned out to be regular trollops, prepared to go the whole hog with the footman or coachman.
    Although Madame does her best to make herself agreeable, she certainly doesn’t know how to set about it like some of those I’ve known. I should think she’s a mean, grumbling sneak, with a nasty nature and a spiteful heart … the sort that would always be after you, plaguing the life out of you in every possible way … ‘Can you do this? Can you do that?’ Or, ‘Do you break things? Are you careful? Have you got a good memory? Are you tidy in your habits?’ On and on and on. And then ‘Are you clean? I am very particular about cleanliness. There are some things I am prepared to overlook, but cleanliness I insist upon.’ What does she take me for? A girl off the farm, or a country skivvy? Cleanliness indeed. I have heard that one before. They all say the same, but as often as not when you get down to brass tacks, when you lift up their skirts and have a look at their underclothes … why they are just filthy, enough to turn your stomach sometimes.
    Anyway, I don’t believe Madame is all that clean. When she showed me her dressing-room, I didn’t see a bath or even a bidet, none of the things a woman needs if she’s to look after herself properly. And certainly none of the knick-knacks and bottles and perfumed intimate things that I so much enjoy playing about with … I can scarcely wait to see her in her birthday suit … That’ll be a sight for sore eyes…
    That evening, as I was laying the table, the master came into the dining-room. He had just come in from shooting. He is very tall, with great broad shoulders, a huge black moustache and pale skin. Though his manners are rather heavy and awkward, he seems to be a decent sort. Obviously, he is no genius like M. Jules Lemaitre, whom I’ve waited on so often in Paris, nor a swell like M. de Janzé —Oh, he was a one! From his thick curled hair, his bull’s neck, his athlete’s calves and his full lips, very red and smiling, you can see he is strong and good-natured. I wouldn’t mind betting he enjoys a bit of sex when he can get it! I could tell straight away, by his nose, with its sensual twitching nostrils, and by the brilliance of his eyes, gentle and gay at the same time. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a human being with such eyebrows, so thick they’re almost obscene … and such hairy hands. Like a lot of physically powerful but not very intelligent men, he’s extremely shy.
    He looked me over with a funny expression that was a mixture of kindliness, surprise and satisfaction, but which was also lascivious, though not impertinent; suggestive, though not brutal. It is obvious that he has not been used to maids like me … I have quite bowled him over already, made a deep impression on him. With some embarrassment he said: ‘Oh … er … oh, so you’re the new maid?’
    Thrusting forward my bosom and lowering my eyes, and in my sweetest voice, at once saucy and