He watched her with half-closed eyes, so that she could not see him. She was little, and had a grave face, a wide forehead, hair drawn back, so that her temples were exposed; her cheeks were pale and high-boned; she had a short nose, pale blue eyes, with a soft, steady look in them, thick lips tightly pressed together, an anemic complexion, a humble, deliberate, and rather stiff manner. She looked after Christophe with busy silent devotion, without a spark of familiarity, and without ever breaking down the reserve of a servant who never forgets class differences.
However, little by little, when he was better and could talk to her, Christophe’s affectionate cordiality made Sidonie talk to him a little more freely: but she was always on her guard: there were obviously certain things which she would not tell. She was a mixture of humility and pride. Christophe learned that she came from Brittany, where she had left her father, of whom she spoke very discreetly: but Christophe gathered that he did nothing but drink, have a good time, and live on his daughter: she put up with it, without saying anything, from pride: and she never failed to send him part of her month’s wages: but she was not taken in. She had also a younger sister who was preparing for a teacher’s examination, and she was very proud of her. She was paying almost all the expenses of her education. She worked frightfully hard, with grim determination.
“Have you a good situation?” asked Christophe.
“Yes. But I am thinking of leaving.”
“Why? Aren’t they good to you?”
“Oh! no. They’re very good to me.”
“Don’t they pay you enough?”
“Yes. …”
He did not quite understand: he tried to understand, and encouraged her to talk. She had nothing to tell him but the monotony of her life, and the difficulty of earning a living: she did not lay any stress on it: she was not afraid of work: it was a necessity to her, almost a pleasure. She never spoke of the thing that tried her most: boredom. He guessed it. Little by little, with the intuition of perfect sympathy, he saw that her suffering was increasing, and it was made more acute for him by the memory of the trials supported by his own mother in a similar existence. He saw, as though he had lived it, the drab, unhealthy, unnatural existence—the ordinary existence imposed on servants by the middle-classes:—employers who were not so much unkind as indifferent, sometimes leaving her for days together without speaking a word outside her work. The hours and hours spent in the stuffy kitchen, the one small window, blocked up by a meat safe, looking out on to a white wall. And her only pleasure was when she was told carelessly that her sauce was good or the meat well cooked. A cramped airless life with no prospect, with no ray of desire or hope, without interest of any kind.—The worst time of all for her was when her employers went away to the country. They economized by not taking her with them: they paid her wages for the month, but not enough to take her home: they gave her permission to go at her own expense. She would not, she could not do that. And so she was left alone in the deserted house. She had no desire to go out, and did not even talk to other servants, whose coarseness and immorality she despised. She never went out in search of amusement: she was naturally serious, economical, and afraid of misadventure. She sat in her kitchen, or in her room, from whence across the chimneys she could see the top of a tree in the garden of a hospital. She did not read, but tried to work listlessly: she would sit there dreaming, bored, bored to tears: she had a singular and infinite capacity for weeping: it was her only pleasure. But when her boredom weighed too heavily on her she could not even weep: she was frozen, sick at heart, and dead. Then she would pull herself together: or life would return of its own accord. She would think of her sister, listen to a barrel-organ in the distance, and dream, and slowly count the days until she had gained such and such a sum of money: she would be out in her reckoning, and begin to count all over again: she would fall asleep. So the days passed. …
The fits of depression alternated with outbursts of childish chatter and laughter. She would make fun of herself and other people. She watched and judged her employers, and their anxieties fed by their want of occupation, and her mistress’s moods and melancholy, and the so-called interests of these so-called people of culture, how they patronized a picture, or a piece of music, or a book of
