De mercede

While you are still debating these matters the bell rings, and you must follow the same routine, go the rounds and stand up; but first you must rub your loins and knees with ointment if you wish to last the struggle out! Then comes a similar dinner, prolonged to the same hour. In your case the diet is in contrast to your former way of living; the sleeplessness, too, and the sweating and the weariness gradually undermine you, giving rise to consumption, pneumonia, indigestion, or that noble complaint, the gout. You stick it out, however, and often you ought to be abed, but this is not permitted. They think illness a pretext, and a way of shirking your duties. The general consequences are that you are always pale and look as if you were going to die any minute.

So it goes in the city. And if you have to go into the country, I say nothing of anything else, but it often rains; you are the last to get there—even in the matter of horses it was your luck to draw that kind !— and you wait about until for lack of accommodation they crowd you in with the cook or the mistress’s hairdresser without giving you even a generous supply of litter for a bed !