As soon as I had arrived, still under the deadening influence of four hours in a third-class railway carriage, and before any one in the kitchen had even thought of offering me a slice of bread, Madame took me over the house, from cellar to garret, in order to immediately familiarize me with my duties. Oh! she does not waste her time, or mine. How big this house is! And how many things and corners it contains! Oh! no, thank you, to keep it in order as it should be, four servants would not suffice. Besides the ground floor, which in itself is very important,--for there are two little pavilions, in the form of a terrace, which constitute additions and continuations,--it has two stories, in which I shall have to be forever going up and down, since Madame, who stays in a little room near the dining-room, has had the ingenious idea of placing the linen-room, where I am to work, at the top of the house, by the side of our chambers. And cupboards, and bureaus, and drawers, and store-rooms, and litters of all sorts,--if you like these things, there are plenty of them. Never shall I find myself in all this. At every minute, in showing me something, Madame said to me: "You will have to be careful about this, my girl. This is very pretty, my girl. This is very rare, my girl. This is very expensive, my girl." She could not, then, call me by my name, instead of saying all the time, "My girl," this, "My girl," that, in that tone of wounding domination which discourages the best wills and straightway puts such a distance, so much hatred, between our mistresses and us? Do I call her "little mother"? And then Madame has always on her lips the words "very expensive." It is provoking. Everything that belongs to her, even paltry articles that cost four sous, are "very expensive." One has no idea where the vanity of the mistress of a house can hide itself. It is really pitiful. In explaining to me the working of an oil lamp, which in no way differed from all other lamps, she said to me: "My girl, you know that this lamp is very expensive, and that it can be repaired only in England. Take care of it, as if it were the apple of your eye." Oh! the cheek that they have, and the fuss that they make about nothing! And when I think that it is all done just to humiliate you, to astonish you!