Managing the house might have filled the void of her idle days, but I soon realized with chagrin that Juliette was not at all the housekeeper she had boasted she was. She was careless, had no taste, was preoccupied only with her linen underwear and her dog; everything else was of no importance to her, and things took their own course or rather went according to the wishes of the servants. Our renewed staff of domestics consisted of a cook, an old, sloppy woman, grasping and ill-tempered, whose cooking talents did not extend beyond tapioca pudding, hashed veal with white sauce and salad; a chamber maid, Celestine, impudent and depraved, who respected only people who spent large sums of money, and a housekeeper, Mother Sochard, who prayed incessantly and often used to get frightfully drunk in order to forget her troubles, as she said: her husband who beat her and took away her money and her daughter who was good for nothing. The waste was enormous, our table very bad and the rest correspondingly so. Whenever we happened to have visitors, Juliette would order from Bignon the rarest and most elaborate dishes. I viewed with displeasure the uncommon intimacy, a sort of bond of friendship, which had sprung up between Juliette and Celestine. When dressing her mistress, the maid told her stories which the former enjoyed immensely; she disclosed improper secrets of the homes where she had served and advised Juliette in all matters. "At Mme. K's they do it this way--at Mme. V's they do it that way." That they were "swell places" goes without saying. Juliette often went into the linen room where Celestine was sewing and stayed there for hours, seated on a heap of bed sheets, listening to the inexhaustible gossip of the servant-girl.... From time to time an argument would arise over some stolen thing or some neglected duty. Celestine would get excited, hurling the grossest insults, knocking the furniture, screaming in her squeaky voice: "Well!... Many thanks to you!... This is some dirty place!... A goose like that has the nerve to accuse one!... Well look here, my pretty one, I am going to shake myself free from you and your boob over there who has the face of a dunce." Juliette would tell her to get out immediately, not wishing her even to stay out her week. "Yes, yes! Pack up at once, you nasty girl ... right away!" She would come to sulk in my presence, pale and trembling: "Ah! my dear, that vile creature, that wretched woman!... And I who was so kind to her!..." In the evening they would make up again, and amidst laughter which resounded louder than ever, Celestine's voice would bawl out: "I should say the Countess was a rude slut!" One day Juliette said to me: "Your little wifie has nothing to put on. She is as naked as a new born child, the poor thing!"