y. She wore
dresses spotted with grease and torn under the arms, aprons in rags,
worn stockings in shoes that were out at heel. She allowed the cooking,
the smoke, the coal, the wax, to soil her hands and face and simply
wiped them as she would after dusting. Formerly she had had the one
coquettish and luxurious instinct of poor women, a love for clean linen.
No one in the house had fresher caps than she. Her simple little
collars were always of that snowy whiteness that lights up the skin so
prettily and makes the whole person clean. Now she wore frayed, dirty
caps which looked as if she had slept in them. She went without ruffles,
her collar made a band of filth against the skin of her neck, and you
felt that she was less clean beneath than above. An odor of poverty,
rank and musty, arose from her. Sometimes it was so strong that
Mademoiselle de Varandeuil could not refrain from saying to her: "Go and
change your clothes, my girl--you smell of the poor!"

In the street she no longer looked as if she belonged to any respectable
person. She had not the appearance of a virtuous woman's maid. She lost
the aspect of a servant who, by dint of displaying her self-esteem and
self-respect even in her garb, reflects in her person the honor and the
pride of her masters. From day to day she sank nearer to the level of
that abject, shameless creature whose dress drags in the gutter--a dirty
slattern.

As she neglected herself, so she neglected everything about her. She
kept nothing in order, she did no cleaning or washing. She allowed dirt
and disorder to make their way into the apartments, to invade
mademoiselle's own sanctum, with whose neatness mademoiselle was
formerly so well pleased and so proud. The dust collected there, the
spiders spun their webs behind the frames, the mirrors were as if
covered with a veil; the marble mantels, the mahogany furniture, lost
their lustre; moths flew up from the carpets which were never shaken,
worms ensconced themselves where the brush and broom no longer came to
disturb them; neglect spread a film of dust over all the sleeping,
neglected objects that were formerly awakened and enlivened every
morning by the maid's active hand. A dozen times mademoiselle had tried
to spur Germinie's self-esteem to action; but thereupon, for a whole
day, there was such a frantic scrubbing, accompanied by such gusts of
ill-humor, that mademoiselle would take an oath never to try again. One
day, however, she