These ridiculous conversations considerably cooled my religious zeal, my ardor for repentance. The work, too, annoyed me. It made me homesick for my own calling. I felt impatient desires to escape from this prison, to return to the privacies of dressing-rooms. I sighed for the closets full of sweet-smelling linen, the wardrobes stuffed with silks, satins, and velvets, so smooth to the touch, and the bath-rooms where white flesh is lathered with oily soaps. And the stories of the servants' hall, and the unforeseen adventures, and the evenings on the stairs and in the chambers! It is really curious; when I have a place, these things disgust me, but, when I am out of a place, I miss them. I was tired also, excessively tired, sickened in fact, from having eaten for a week nothing but preserves made out of spoiled currants, of which the good sisters had purchased a large quantity in the Levallois market. Anything that the holy women could rescue from the refuse-heap was good enough for us. What completed my irritation was the evident, the persistent effrontery with which we were exploited. Their game was a very simple one, and they took little pains to conceal it. They found places only for those girls of whom they could make no use themselves. Those from whom they could reap any profit whatever they held as prisoners, taking advantage of their talents, of their strength, and of their simplicity. As the height of Christian charity, they had found a way of having servants who paid for the privilege of working, and whom they stripped, without remorse and with inconceivable cynicism, of their modest resources and their little savings, after making a profit out of their labor. And the costs kept running on. I complained, at first feebly, and then more forcibly, that they had not once summoned me into the reception-room, but to all my complaints the hypocrites answered: "A little patience, my dear child! We are planning to get you an excellent place, my dear child; for you we desire an exceptional place. We know what sort of a place you should have. As yet not one has offered itself such as we wish for you, and such as you deserve." Days and weeks passed. The places were never good enough, never exceptional enough for me. And the costs kept running on. Although there was a watcher in the dormitory, the things that went on every night were enough to make one shudder. As soon as the watcher had finished her round, and every one seemed to be asleep, you could see white forms arise and glide about among the beds. The good sisters, holy women, closed their eyes that they might see nothing, stopped up their ears that they might hear nothing. Wishing to avoid scandal, they tolerated horrors of which they feigned ignorance. And the costs kept running on.