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shall breathe them in my hair, on my mouth, on my breast, on every part of my body. We’ll soon show the old misery what it is to enjoy ourselves, I promise you.’
    And to give material form to my silent promise, as I put the lamp on the table, I was careful to brush gently against his arm. Then I withdrew.

    The servants’ quarters here are hardly what you’d call cheerful. There are only two others besides myself; a cook who never stops grumbling, and a gardener-coachman who never says a word. The cook’s name is Marianne, the coachman’s Joseph; wretched peasants, the pair of them. She, fat, soft, flabby, sprawling, the fleshy folds of her neck showing above a filthy kerchief that you’d think she used for wiping her saucepans, with enormous shapeless breasts under a kind of blue cotton blouse bespattered with grease, and a skirt too short for her, revealing thick ankles and broad feet clad in grey woollen stockings; he, in his shirtsleeves, with a green baize apron and clogs, clean-shaven, dried-up and nervy, with a hideous grin on his lips that splits his face in two from ear to ear, with a twisted walk and the sly movements of a sacristan. Such are my two companions.
    As there is no servants hall, we take our meals in the kitchen, on the same table where, during the day, the cook does all her dirty jobs—cutting up meat and vegetables, gutting fish, with her fat round fingers like black puddings. It’s really the limit.
    This first evening, the heat from the fire made the atmosphere of the room stifling, and there was a continual smell of stale grease, rancid sauces and everlasting frying. All the time we were eating, a foul stench came from the saucepan where the dog’s food was cooking, which caught you in the throat and made you cough … enough to make you throw up … They show more concern for the criminals in their prisons, and the dogs in their kennels … The meal consisted of fat bacon and cabbage, followed by stinking cheese, with only rough cider to drink … nothing else. The plates were earthenware, and as most of the glaze had worn off they smelt of burnt fat; and, to crown it all, the forks were made of tin.
    Having only just arrived, I did not want to complain. But I didn’t want to eat, either. There’s no point in making my stomach worse, thank you very much. ‘Why aren’t you eating anything?’ asked the cook.
    ‘Because I’m not hungry,’ I replied in a dignified tone of voice.
    Whereupon Marianne grunted: ‘I suppose her ladyship would prefer truffles?’
    Keeping my temper, still snooty and standoffish, I said: ‘It might interest you to know that I have at least eaten truffles, which is more than some people can say.’
    That shut her up. Meanwhile, the coachman went on stuffing his mouth with huge chunks of fat bacon and watching me furtively. I don’t know why, but the way this man looked at me was embarrassing, and his silence worried me. Though he was no longer young, I was astonished by the suppleness of his movements, swaying his hips when he walked like the undulations of a snake. But it’s time I described him in more detail. His rough, greying hair, low forehead and slanting eyes, his prominent cheekbones and broad, powerful jaw, and his long, fleshy, jutting chin, all combined to produce a curious effect that I find hard to define. Was he a scoundrel, or was he just a simpleton? I couldn’t tell. Yet the strange thing was that in some way the man impressed me, though eventually this obsession wore off. I realized that it had been just another of the thousand and one tricks of my excessively romantic imagination, which makes me see both things and people as all black or all white, and which was now doing its best to transform this wretched Joseph into someone superior to the stupid lout, the dull peasant that he really was.
    Towards the end of the meal Joseph, still without saying a word, took a copy of Free Speech from his apron pocket, and started reading it