, and I stopped and asked my companion this question: "Are the
Dutch servants the eternal torment of their mistresses?"

Here I must make a short digression. It is well known that ladies of a
certain age, good mothers and good housekeepers, whose social position
does not allow them to leave their servants to themselves--who, for
instance, have only one servant, who has to be both cook and lady's
maid,--it is well known that such ladies often talk for hours on this
subject. The conversations are always the same--of insupportable
defects, insolence that they have had to endure, impertinent answers,
dishonesty in buying the things needed for the kitchen, of waste,
untruthfulness, immense pretensions, of discharges, of the annoyance
of searching for new servants, and other such calamities; the refrain
always being that the honest and faithful servants, who became
attached to the family and grew old in the same service, have ceased
to exist; now one is obliged to change them continually, and there is
no way of getting back to the old order. Is this true or false? Is it
a result of the liberty and equality of classes, making service harder
to bear and the servants more independent? Is it an effect of the
relaxation of manners and of public discipline, which has made itself
felt even in the kitchen? However it may be, the fact remains that at
home I heard this subject so much discussed that one day, before I
left for Spain, I said to my mother, "If anything in Madrid can
console me in being so far from my family, it will be that I shall
hear no more of this odious subject." On my arrival at Madrid I went
into a hostelry, and the first thing the landlady said was that she
had changed her maids three times in a month, and was driven to
desperation: she did not know which saint to pray to: and so long as I
remained there the same lamentation continued. On my return home I
told my family about it; they all laughed, and my mother concluded
that there must be the same trouble in every country. "No," said I,
"in the northern countries it must be different."--"You will see that
I am right," my mother answered. I went to Paris, and of the first
housekeeper with whom I became acquainted I asked the question, "Are
the servants here the everlasting torment of their mistresses, as they
are in Italy and Spain?"--"_Ah! mon cher monsieur_," she answered,
clasping her hands and looking above her, "_ne me parlez pas de ca!_"
Then followed a lon