gloves lying in a chair to feel my own insignificance. I have only to hear his bell, to start like a nervous horse. . . . And now that I see his boots standing there so stiff and proper, I feet like bowing and scraping. . . . I can't account for it but-but ah, it is that damned servant in my back -I believe if the Count came here now, and told me to cut my throat, I would do it on the spot. . . . Superstition and prejudice taught in childhood can't be uprooted in a moment.
No, superstition and prejudice cannot be uprooted in a moment; nor in years. The awe of authority, servility before station and wealth - these are the curse of the Jean class that makes such cringing slaves of them. Cringing before those who are above them, tyrannical and overbearing toward those who are below them. For Jean has the potentiality of the master in him as much as that of the slave. Yet degrading as "the damned servant" reacts upon Jean, it is much more terrible in its effect upon Kristin, the cook, the dull, dumb animal who has so little left of the spirit of independence that she has lost even the ambition to rise above her condition. Thus when Kristin, the betrothed of Jean, discovers that her mistress Julie had given herself to him, she is indignant that her lady should have so much forgotten her station as to stoop to her father's valet.
