mansion of the banker you meet tjiesame filth, and
come in contact with the inexorable. The result of
it all, for a girl like me, is that she is conquered
in advance, wherever she may go and whatever she
may do. The poor are the human manure in which
grow the harvests of life, the harvests of joy which
the rich reap, and which they misuse so cruelly
against us. They pretend that there is no more
slavery. Oh ! what nonsense ? And what are
domestics, then, if not slaves? Slaves in fact,
with all that slavery involves of moral vileness,
inevitable corruption, and hate-engendering
rebellion. Servants learn vice in the houses of
their masters. Entering upon their duties pure and
innocent, — some of them, — they are quickly made
rotten by contact with habits of depravity. They
see nothing but vice, they breathe nothing but vice,
they touch nothing but vice. Consequently, from
day to day, from minute to minute, they get more
and more used to it, being defenceless against it,
being obliged, on the contrary, to serve it, to care
for it, to respect it. And their revolt arises from
the fact that they are powerless to satisfy it, and to
break down all the obstacles in the way of its
natural expansion. Oh! it is extraordinary.
They demand of us all the virtues, complete resig-
nation, all the sacrifices, all the heroisms, and
only those vices that flatter the vanity of the
masters, and which yield them a profit. And all