#mirbeau

“I don’t expect much from politicians, corporate tycoons, the presidents of prestigious universities, billionaire philanthropists, celebrities, royalty or oligarchs. They live in narcissistic and hedonistic bubbles that cater to their self-worship and moral depravity. But I do expect a lot from intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky. The explanation by his wife Valéria - Noam suffered a severe stroke in June 2023 and is incapacitated - of their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is filled with the fatuous excuses used by all those who have been outed in the Epstein emails and documents. According to Valéria, she and Noam were “overly trusting.” This led to “poor judgment.” She writes that she and Noam were ensnared by dinners with luminaries at Epstein’s mansion, flights on his private jet nicknamed the Lolita Express, a literary reference to the sexual exploitation of girls Noam would have recognized, financial assistance, trips to Epstein’s ranch and the use of one of Epstein’s apartments in New York. Like everyone else outed in the Epstein files she and Noam “never witnessed any inappropriate behavior from Epstein or others.”

Noam’s advice to Epstein on how to handle press inquiries into his crimes, like Noam’s letter of recommendation for Epstein, was, she insists, the result of Epstein’s taking “advantage of Noam’s public criticism towards what came to be known as ‘cancel culture’ to present himself as a victim of it.” After Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, she and Noam “were careless in not thoroughly researching his background.” She ends by expressing “unrestricted solidarity with the victims.” Her letter regurgitates the formula of everyone outed in the Epstein files. I know and have long admired Noam. He is, arguably, our greatest and most principled intellectual. I can assure you he is not as passive or gullible as his wife claims. He knew about Epstein’s abuse of children. They all knew. And like others in the Epstein orbit, he did not care. From the email correspondence between Epstein and Valéria it appears she particularly enjoyed the privileges that came with being in Epstein’s circle, but this does not absolve Noam’s acquiescence. Noam, of all people, knows the predatory nature of the ruling class and the cruelty of capitalists, where the vulnerable, especially girls and women, are commodified as objects to be used and exploited. He was not fooled by Epstein. He was seduced. His association with Epstein is a terrible and, to many, unforgivable stain. It irreparably tarnishes his legacy. If there is a lesson here, it is this. The ruling class offers nothing without expecting something in return. The closer you get to these vampires the more you become enslaved. Our role is not to socialize with them. It is to destroy them.” - Chris Hedges, ‘Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Epstein and the Politics of Betrayal’ (9 February 2026)

“Who is it — throughout this endless procession of tortures which has been the history of the human race — who is it that sheds the blood, always the same, relentlessly, without any pause for the sake of mercy? Governments, religions, industries, forced labor camps, all of these are drenched in blood. The murder is weary of their laws, their prayers, and their progress. Again just recently, there were the frenzied butchers who turned Paris into a slaughterhouse as the Commune perished. There were pointless massacres, such as at Fourmies where the bodies of innocent women and little kids tried out the ballistic virtues of the Lebels machine gun for the first time. And there are always the mines in which fifty, a hundred, or five hundred poor devils are suffocated, swallowed in a single moment of horrible destruction, their charred bodies never to see daylight again. And there are also the horrid conquests of distant countries where happy races, unknown and peaceful, groan under the boot of that robber of continents, that filthy rapist of forest communities and virgin lands, the western slave trader.

Each footstep taken in this society bristles with privileges, and is marked with a bloodstain; each turn of the government machinery grinds the tumbling, gasping flesh of the poor; and tears are running from everywhere in the impenetrable night of suffering. Facing these endless murders and continuous tortures, what’s the meaning of society, this crumbling wall, this collapsing staircase?

We live in ugly times. The misery has never been worse, because it’s never been more obvious, and it’s never stood closer to the spectacle of wasted riches and the promised land of well-being from which it is relentlessly turned away. Never has the law, which protects only the banks, pressed so hard upon the tortured shoulders of the poor. Capitalism is insatiable, and the wage system compounds the evils of ancient slavery. The shops are packed full of clothing, and there are those who go about completely naked; the indifferent rich are puking up food, while others perish from hunger in their doorways. No cry is heeded: whenever a single, louder complaint penetrates the din of sad murmurs, the Lebels is loaded and the troops are mobilized.

And that’s not all.

“"You can see that the Chinese, who are accused of being barbarians, are, to the contrary, more civilized than we; for they are grounded deeper in the logic of life and the harmony of nature! They do not consider the act of love a shameful thing that should be hidden. To the contrary, they glorify it, hymning all the gestures and caresses; just like the ancients, moreover, for whom the sexual organ, far from being an object of infamy and an image of impurity, was a God! You see how all Occidental art loses by the fact that the magnificent expressions of love have been denied it. With us, eroticism is poor, stupid and frigid. It is always presented in ambiguous attitudes of sin, while here it preserves all its vital scope, all its passionate poetry and the stupendous pulse of all nature. But you are only a European lover . . . a poor, timid, chilly little soul, in whom Catholicism has stupidly inculcated a fear of nature and a hatred of love. It has warped and perverted the sense of life in you."

"Dear Clara," I objected, "is it really natural for you to seek sensuality in decomposition, and urge your desires to greater heights by horrible spectacles of suffering and death? Isn't that, to the contrary, a perversion of that nature whose cult you invoke, in order perhaps to excuse whatever criminal and monstrous qualities your sensuality involves?"

"No!" said Clara, quickly, "since love and death are the same thing! And since decomposition is the eternal resurrection of life . . . Look—" Suddenly she interrupted herself, and said:

"How provoking that you don't understand anything! How is it you don't feel it? How is it you haven't already felt that it is—I don't even say by love, but by the heightened sensuality which is the perfection of love that all the intellectual faculties of man awaken and become more acute? And it's by this sensuality alone that you attain the full development of personality. Look! In the act of love, have you ever thought, for instance, of committing a beautiful crime? That is to say, lifting yourself above social prejudices and all the laws—above everything, in fact? And if you haven't thought of it, then why do you bother making love?"

"I haven't the strength to argue," I stammered, "and it seems to me we are walking in a nightmare. This sun . . . this crowd . . . these smells . . . and your eyes—ah, your torturous and lustful eyes—and your voice . . . and your penchant for crime . . . all that terrifies me, and it's all driving me mad!"

Clara gave a little mocking laugh.

“At first, after all I had just been through, there was something very comforting about the peace and silence of the place, despite the wretched food, and the almoner's trousers, and the lack of freedom, and the harsh exploitation that I was already beginning to suspect . . . I made little attempt to reason things out. I just wanted to pray. Remorse for my past behaviour or, rather, the feeling of exhaustion it had left me with, had aroused a fervent longing for repentance and forgiveness. Several times I made my confession to the almoner, yet though my intentions were quite sincere, when I thought of having to mend his filthy trousers, I couldn't help having the most irreverent and ridiculous ideas... He was a funny character, this almoner, round as a barrel, very red in the face, rather coarse in speech and manners, and smelling like an old sheep. He used to ask me the strangest questions, especially about the kind of books I liked reading.

'Armand Silvestre? Well, yes . . . I suppose so . . . Pretty smutty of course . . . I wouldn't exactly swop him for the Imitation of Christ . . . Still, he's not dangerous . . . What you mustn't read are blasphemous books . . . books against religion . . . Voltaire, for example. Never read Voltaire—that would be a mortal sin—nor Renan, nor Anatole France either . . . They are the kind of writers that are really dangerous.’

‘What about Paul Bourget, Father?’

'Bourget? Well, he's certainly turned over a new leaf . . . I wouldn't say no, I wouldn't say no. But he's not a genuine Catholic, not yet at least . . . He's still very muddled . . . He seems to me, this Bourget, rather like a wash-basin . . . Yes, that's it . . . a wash-basin that all sorts of people have been washing in, where you're apt to find olives from Mount Calvary floating about amongst bits of soap and hair . . . It would be better to wait a bit . . . And Huysmans? Well, he’s a bit steep . . . Still, he’s quite orthodox.’

Another time he said to me: ‘Yes, I see . . . So you commit sins of the flesh. Well, that's certainly not right. Indeed, it's very wicked of you . . . Still, if you've got to sin, it's better you should do so with your employers—provided, of course, they're really religious people—than by yourself or with people of your own station in life. Sins of that kind aren't so serious . . . they don't upset God so much. Besides, people like that may very well have a dispensation . . . they often do, you know."

But directly I mentioned the names of Monsieur Xavier and his father, he cut me short:

‘Oh, no names, no names. I must ask you never to mention anybody by name . . . After all I am not a policeman. Besides, these people you refer to are rich and respectable, and extremely devout. By naming them, it is you who are committing a sin, because it means that you are rebelling against morality and against society.’

These ridiculous discussions, and especially the nagging all too human memory of his trousers, which I simply couldn't get out of my mind, considerably damped down my religious enthusiasm and longing for forgiveness. The work I had to do also got on my nerves. It made me feel a nostalgia for my proper job. I longed to escape from this prison, and to return to the intimacies of the boudoir. I yearned for cupboards full of perfumed underclothes, for wardrobes filled with taffetas and satins, for the soft feel of velvet and the sight of white bodies, relaxing in luxurious baths and half hidden by the soapy water. I missed all the gossip of the servants' hall, all the unexpected adventures that lie in wait in every bedroom, on every staircase . . . It's strange, because, when I am actually in a situation, such things disgust me, yet, as soon as I'm out of work, I miss them . . . And another thing—I was absolutely fed up with the jam we'd been getting for the last week . . . always the same, made of overripe gooseberries, simply because the Sisters had managed to buy a cheap lot at the Levallois market . . . Anything that could be saved from the garbage pail was good enough for us.

But what was really the last straw, was the quite obvious and shameless way they exploited us. It was such a perfectly simple trick that they scarcely bothered to conceal it. The only girls they found places for were those they themselves could no longer make use of. As long as it was possible to make any kind of profit out of them, by taking advantage of their talents, or strength, or lack of experience, they kept them prisoners. As the height of Christian charity, they had discovered a way of getting servants to work for them who would pay for the privilege of doing so, while at the same time robbing them, quite remorselessly and with incredible cynicism, of the modest resources they had managed to put by, having already made a profit out of their work . . .

I complained, feebly at first but later on more emphatically, that I had never once been summoned to the convent parlour. But to all my complaints these holy hypocrites merely replied:

'Have patience, dear child. We have you in mind for a very special situation, and we intend to tind it for you. We know just what would suit you, but so far nothing has turned up . . . not what we would like for you . . . not what you deserve.'

Days and weeks went by, yet still none of the situations were good enough, 'special' enough for me . . . And all the while my debt to them was increasing.

Paulette Goddard, ‘The Diary Of A Chambermaid’ (1946)

“After a few banal and laboured exchanges about the more futile events of the day, the conversation gradually became general, and eventually settled down to a discussion of standards of propriety in society. All these poor devils, these pathetic men and women, forgetting the looseness of their own lives, displayed a relentless severity towards anyone who they suspected, not of any social offense, but merely of having, at one time or another, shown too little respect for those social standards which alone they regarded as binding. Living, in a sense, outside their own social ideal, thrust aside, so to speak, by a way of life whose proprieties and observances were their only religion, they seemed to imagine that, by expelling others, they themselves would be readmitted. Their approach to the question was really extremely comical. For them, the whole world was divided into two: those things that were 'done’, and those that were not; those people it was permissible to entertain, and those who on no account could be invited into one's house . . . And these two major-divisions of the world were again split up into an infinity of sub-divisions. Thus, there were some people with whom it was permissible to dine, and others whom one might only call on—and vice versa . . . those one might entertain at one's own table, and those who could only be invited—and then only on strictly prescribed conditions—to one's evening parties . . . Then there were those people whose invitations to dinner must be refused and whom one should on no account receive in one's own house, and others that it was permissible to receive but not to dine with . . . Or again, there were people one might invite to lunch but never to dinner, and yet others with whom one might dine in the country but not in Paris, and so on, and so on. And all this was based on precise and exacting precedents derived from the behaviour of the most exclusive circles of society . . .

'Subtlety,’ declared Viscount Lahyrais, sportsman, clubman, gambler and cheat. '. . . . that's what really counts. Whether anyone really belongs to society or not, depends entirely on his ability to observe these fine distinctions.'