Chapter 2 - Meat and the Social Hierarchy

Summary

On a busy Christmas Eve, one of the great feasting days of the year, a young governess named Jeanne Marseille sent the housemaid to shop for meat at Master Butcher Drieux's stall. The governess worked for the Non family in the Saint Eustache parish, a bourgeois household that had been a regular client of butcher Drieux over a year-and-a-half. Upon the maid's return from the Quinze-Vingt butchery, Jeanne discovered that the meat Drieux supplied was not only rotten, but of the poorest cut. In her report to the police, she claimed the quality of the food “did not at all agree with the house of Monsieur Non.” As the most senior servant responsible for the household provisions, Jeanne took it upon herself to return to butcher Drieux's stall and to demand a better portion. Drieux met her pleas for better service with fierce indignation as her rejection of his goods threatened the butcher's honor and reputation as a guild master. Drieux let his temper fly, calling Jeanne a slut and a whore, finally accusing her of “serving her master” in a less than respectable way. His diatribe struck at the notion of civility that a domestic of elevated stature such as Jeanne would expect. Seeking to restore her honor, she left the butchery immediately and filed a formal complaint with the local police commissaire.