Octave Mirbeau

A Chambermaid's Diary Octave Mirbeau

A Chambermaid's Diary by Octave Mirbeau Translated from the French by Benj. R. Tucker - A French chambermaid, who has served in Paris, in the houses of the nobility, the bourgeois, and professional people, finally enters the service of a rich couple living in the country, and there begins to keep a diary. In describing the events of her daily life and the people about her, she is frequently reminded of episodes in her past, and digresses to relate them. Thus her diary becomes a piquant panorama of social life and institutions. It is a terrific social exposure, a grim social satire, crammed with humor, bitterness, and truth. It has been described by a French critic as "an attempt to show that nearly all the masters are low-lived wretches, and that nearly all the servants are as near like them as they know how to be." 'Well, such an atmosphere emanates from Joseph. The other day I admired him as he was lifting a cask of wine. He played with it like a child with its rubber ball. His exceptional strength, his supple skill, the terrible leverage of his loins, the athletic push of his shoulders, all combined to make me dreamy. The strange and unhealthy curiosity, prompted by fear as much as by attraction, which is excited in me by the riddle of these suspicious manners, of this closed mouth, of this impressing look, is doubled by this muscular power, this bull's back.'