information as
to the way in which the lower classes look at life from beneath---
that is, when he speaks the truth, which is not often, as he
prefers what seems favourable to himself to what is true. When
_Miss Julia_ suggests that the lower classes must feel the pressure
from above very heavily, _Jean_ agrees with her, of course, because
he wants to gain her sympathy. But he corrects himself at once, the
moment he realises the advantage of standing apart from the herd.

And _Jean_ stands above _Miss Julia_ not only because his fate is in
ascendancy, but because he is a man. Sexually he is the aristocrat
because of his male strength, his more finely developed senses, and
his capacity for taking the initiative. His inferiority depends
mainly on the temporary social environment in which he has to live,
and which he probably can shed together with the valet's livery.

The mind of the slave speaks through his reverence for the count
(as shown in the incident with the boots) and through his religious
superstition. But he reveres the count principally as a possessor
of that higher position toward which he himself is striving. And
this reverence remains even when he has won the daughter of the
house, and seen that the beautiful shell covered nothing but
emptiness.

I don't believe that any love relation in a "higher" sense can
spring up between two souls of such different quality. And for this
reason I let _Miss Julia_ imagine her love to be protective or
commiserative in its origin. And I let _Jean_ suppose that, under
different social conditions, he might feel something like real love
for her. I believe love to be like the hyacinth, which has to
strike roots in darkness _before_ it can bring forth a vigorous
flower. In this case it shoots up quickly, bringing forth blossom
and seed at once, and for that reason the plant withers so soon.

_Christine_, finally, is a female slave, full of servility and
sluggishness acquired in front of the kitchen fire, and stuffed
full of morality and religion that are meant to serve her at once
as cloak and scapegoat. Her church-going has for its purpose to
bring her quick and easy riddance of all responsibility for her
domestic thieveries and to equip her with a new stock of
guiltlessness. Otherwise she is a subordinate figure, and therefore
purposely sketched in the same manner as the minister and the
doctor in "The Father," whom I designed as ordinary human beings,
like the common r