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Warner - World's Best Literature - v17 - Mai to Mom
They live the empty, tragic, or grotesque hours of their
lives; are sometimes touching, sometimes odious; and never achieve
greatness either in heroism or in wickedness.
They are not gay, these stories; and the kind of amusement they
afford is strongly mixed with irony, pity, and contempt. Gayety,
whether brutal, frank, mocking, or delicate, never leaves this bitter
taste in the heart. How pitiful in its folly, in its vanity, in its weak-
ness, is the humanity which loves, weeps, or agitates in the tales of
Maupassant! There, virtue if awkward is never recompensed, nor vice
if skillful punished; mothers are not always saints, nor sons always
grateful and respectful; the guilty are often ignorant of remorse.
Then are these beings immoral ? To tell the truth, they are guided
by their instincts, by events, submissive to the laws of necessity, and
apparently released by the author from all responsibility.
Such is the individual humor of Guy de Maupassant, - a humor
rarely joyous, without sparkling shocks of repartee; a humor tinged
with bitterness and contempt, arising usually from the seriousness of
ridiculous people and from the ridiculousness of serious people, and
nearly always from the universal powerlessness to advance beyond
mediocrity. And if Maupassant is cruel to his heroes, he would
doubtless say that it is because life too is cruel, unjust, sad, deceiv-
ing; and that beauty, virtue, and happiness are only exceptions.
Thence the pessimistic tendency of his work. Nothing shows this
original pessimism - rough and lucid, emotional without lyricism --
better than the novel Une Vie. ' It is the story of a co
commonplace
existence: the life of a country woman, married to a brutal and ava-
ricious country squire, delivered from him through a neighbor's ven-
geance, deceived by her son as well as by her husband, and fixing
her obstinate hope upon the grandchild, who perhaps, if death does
not liberate her in time, will add one supreme deception to all the
others. This woman, who believes herself the victim of a special
fatality, has against her nothing but the chance of a bad choice,
and the weakness of her own tender spirit, incapable of struggle or
action. She is good, pure, and perhaps more sympathetic than any
other of Maupassant's heroines. Her life is like many other lives,
and doubtless the sadness which emanates from it widens to infinity.
In the short stories, this pessimistic tendency grows finer and
sharper so as sometimes to find expression in a tragic element.
But with Maupassant the tragic is of very special essence, and not
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
>
expressed in grand melodramatic effects or catastrophes as in roman-
ticism. Nor does it consist in the classic debate between duty and
passion. No, it consists rather in a wholly physical emotion, excited
by the wretchedness of certain destinies, and evoking in its turn the
mysterious menaces which hover over us. Disease, madness, death,
are in ambush behind every door of our house; and no
one has
expressed better than Maupassant the terror of the being who feels
their breath or sees them face to face. No one has felt with deeper
sorrow behind this human misery, the frightful solitude of man
among men; the black chasm which separates us from those whom
we love; the impossibility of uniting two hearts or two thoughts;
the slow succession of the little miseries of life; the fatal disorgan-
ization of a solitary existence whose dreams have vanished; and the
reason of those tragic endings which only nervous, sensitive minds
can understand.
This enables us to grasp the very principle of Maupassant's pes-
simism, and of this disorganization in which his clear and vigorous
intellect foundered. Even his first volume, Des Vers,' showed this
haunting thought of death, this sadness of the supersensitive soul har-
assed and unsatisfied, powerless to take pleasure in the joys which
are scattered through the universe. In the two little poems (La
Venus Rustique (The Country Venus) and (Au Bord de l'Eau' (On
the Water's Brink), there is as it were an intoxication with life, which
at first appears the sane and happy expression of a robust tempera-
ment, but which quickly ends in nostalgia and horror of nothingness.
And here is the keynote to Maupassant's sensualism: it is the fran-
tic desire to concentrate in the senses of a single man all that the
material world contains of delight,— colors, sounds, perfumes, beauty
under all its forms; it is the adoration of matter, and it is the de-
spair of a being crushed by the blind, implacable, and eternal divinity
which it has chosen. What does feeling become in this pagan joy,
this mother of pains and slaveries? It is easy to see: love is as fatal
as death. It is a force of nature which we can neither control nor
avoid, nor fix according to our wish; and its very nature explains
the derangements of hearts, the betrayals, the jealousies, which deck
it in fictitious sentimentality. Final conclusion: our free will, our
liberty, are illusions; and morality is suppressed at the same time
that remorses, internal conflicts, duties are reduced to mere conven-
tions useful to society.
This is the principle of Maupassant's pessimism. As is evident, it
springs directly from his naturalism. His conception of art and his
conception of life are closely allied. This pessimism became more
and more accentuated from one work to another; from Une Vie'
(1883) to Notre Cour) (1892). But in the measure of the novelist's
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9807
more and more profound investigation of life, he imperceptibly and to
a certain degree substituted psychological study for realism according
to Flaubert's formula. This evolution of Guy de Maupassant's talent
asserts itself in Pierre et Jean (1888), and is still more clearly
delineated in Fort comme la Mort' and Notre Cæur. ' We are far
away from the Boule de Suifs' and the like. His observation has
become acuter, his language better shaded. There is a more flexible
precision in the study of more delicate sentiments and of more
complicated minds. Is not the love of the old painter Bertin for
the daughter of the woman he has passionately loved an exceptional
sentiment ? It was a ticklish subject; and the author presented it
very ably, without brutalities. We cannot help pitying the woman
who feels herself growing old, the man who cherished in his friend's
daughter the young beauty of the mother whom he once loved. But
the charming child is ignorant of the harm she is innocently doing.
She marries, and the old painter bears his passion with him 'in death;
while Madame de Guilleroy burns the old letters, their love letters,
found in a drawer, and Olivier's resigned agony is lighted up by the
reflection of their blazing leaves.
This novel was less successful than its predecessors. The ordi-
nary public, who had enjoyed Maître Hauchecorne) and Mademoi-
selle Fifi,' thought that its author had been changed. It asserted
that the success of the psychologic novel had fascinated Maupassant.
Perhaps we should see in this new phase of his talent only a conse-
quence of the modification which years and the events of his inti-
mate life had little by little brought about. Notre Cour) would
confirm this view. It resembles an autobiography. It is the eternal
misunderstanding between man and woman, — drawing near for an
ant, never united, and never giving the same words the same
meaning. What an exquisite charming face is that of Michelle de
Burne! a costly flower blossoming after centuries of extreme civiliza-
tion; a positive, gently egoistic being, in whom nothing is left of
primitive woman except the need of dazzling others and of being
adored. Simple sincere Elizabeth may console André Mariolle; but
neither brilliant orchid nor humble daisy can replace or make the
other forgotten. That is why André, uniting the two in a single
bouquet, renounces the torturing dream of one only love.
Thus Guy
de Maupassant had been led by the progress of his observation and
his analysis to penetrate into the intimate regions of the heart, where
our most secret and most diverse sentiments hide, struggle, suppli-
cate, and contend with each other. This progress of the novelist is
natural. As his observation grows sharper and finer, it penetrates
deeper; proceeds from faces to minds, and from gestures to feelings.
Psychological analysis appears, and with it reflection. The mind falls
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
back upon itself; the man returns to his own thoughts, his dreams,
his emotions. He descends into his own heart, and irony becomes pity
and tenderness. His art is perhaps more human.
Neither Fort comme la Mort) nor Notre Cour,' Guy de Mau-
passant's last two novels, shows any trace of insanity. Yet when
the world learned in 1893 that this terrible disease had seized the
famous novelist, those who had read and studied his work were only
half surprised. It was then some years since the reading of Horla'
had made them anxious.
What is Horla’? – It is not a spirit, it is not a phantom of the
imagination. It is not any kind of a creature either natural or su-
pernatural. It is not even an illusion of sick senses, a hallucination
of fever. No; it is something both more real and less real, less dis-
quieting and more so: it is the unknown hostility surrounding one in
the invisible. It is everywhere,- in the bed curtains, in the water
pitcher, in the fire lighted to drive it from the house. Dream of a
madman, whom the wing of insanity had brushed! Already in 1884,
in the story entitled Lui, there had been signs of this fear of fears,
fear of the spasms of a wandering mind, fear of that horrible sensa-
tion of incomprehensible terror:-“I am afraid of the walls, of the
furniture, of the familiar objects which seem to me to assume a kind
of animal life. Above all I fear the horrible confusion of my thought,
of my reason escaping, entangled and scattered by an invisible and
mysterious anguish. ”
Sensuality, pessimism, obsession of nothingness, hallucinations of
the strange,- these different states cruelly asserted their logical
dependence in the intellectual history of Guy de Maupassant. The
mind which had seemed so profoundly sane and free from any mor-
bid germ became disordered, and then shattered entirely. The uni-
verse of forms, sounds, colors, and perfumes, to which he had so
complaisantly surrendered himself, became uninhabitable. Perhaps it
is necessary that in its attitude toward matter the mind should
always retain a kind of distrust, and dominate it without yielding
completely to its sorceries and enchantments. To this feast Maupas-
sant had opened all his senses. The day came when he felt his ideas
flying around him, he said, like butterflies. With his habitual grasp
he still sought to seize them while they were already far from his
empty brain.
Guy de Maupassant died in 1893, when forty-three
years old. His robust constitution could not resist the excessive ex-
penditure of all his energies.
Firmin Roz
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9809
THE LAST YEARS OF MADAME JEANNE
From A Life)
J
EANNE did not go out any more. She hardly bestirred herself.
Each morning she got up at the same hour; took notice of
the weather outside; and then went down and seated her-
self before the fire in the hall.
She would remain there whole days, immovable, her eyes
fixed upon the flame, giving course to lamentable thoughts, fol-
lowing the melancholy retrospect of her sorrows. Little by little
darkness would invade the small room as the day closed, without
her having made any other movement than to put more wood on
the fire. Then Rosalie would bring the lamp, exclaiming to her,
"Come, come, Madame Jeanne! You must shake yourself up a
bit, or really you won't have any appetite this evening for sup-
per. ”
__
Often, too, she was persecuted by fixed ideas, which besieged
and tortured her; by insignificant preoccupations,— mere trifles
which took in her dim brain a false importance.
More than anything else she took to living over the past, –
her past that lay furthest back, haunted by the early days of
her life, - by her wedding trip, over there in Corsica. Suddenly
there would rise up before her, landscapes of that island so long
forgotten, seen now in the embers of the fireplace: she would
recall all the details, all the trivial little episodes, every face
once met in that time; the fine head of the guide that they had
employed — Jean Ravoli — kept coming before her, and she some-
times fancied that she heard his voice.
Then too she would fall into a revery upon the happy years
of her son's childhood, when she and Aunt Lison, with Paul, had
worked in the salad-bed together, kneeling side by side in the soft
ground, the two women rivals in their effort to amuse the child
as they toiled among the young plants.
So musing, her lips would murmur, “Poulet, Poulet! my little
Poulet,” — as if she were speaking to him; and, her revery broken
as she spoke, she would try during whole hours to write the boy's
name in the air, shaping with her outstretched finger these letters.
She would trace them slowly in space before the fire, sometimes
imagining that she really saw them, then believing that her eyes
had deceived her; and so she would rewrite the capital P again,
her old arm trembling with fatigue, but forcing herself to trace
XV11-614
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
was
the name to its end; then when she had finished it she would
write it over again. At last she could not write it any more.
She would confuse everything,— form other words at random,
enfeebled almost to idiocy.
All the little manias of those who live solitary took hold of
her. The least change in her surroundings irritated her,
Rosalie would often insist upon making her walk about, and
even carry her off to the roadside: but Jeanne at the end of
twenty minutes would always end up by saying, “No, I am too
tired out, my good girl;” and then she would sit down on the
edge of the green roadside.
Indeed, movement of any
kind soon distasteful to her,
and she would stay in bed in the morning as late as possible.
Ever since her infancy one particular habit had remained tena-
ciously with her,—that of jumping up out of bed just as soon as
she had swallowed her morning coffee. She was very much set
on that way of breakfasting, and the privation would have been
felt more than anything else. Each morning she would await
Rosalie's arrival at her bedside with an exaggerated impatience;
and just as soon as the cup was put upon the table at her side,
she would start up and empty it almost greedily, and then begin
to dress herself at once.
But now, little by little, she had grown into the habit of
dreamily waiting some seconds after she had put back the cup
into the plate; then she would settle herself again in her bed;
and then, little by little, would lengthen her idleness from day
to day, until Rosalie would come back furious at such delay, and
would dress her mistress almost by force.
Besides all this, she did not seem to have now any appear-
ance of a will about matters; and each time that Rosalie would
ask her opinion as to whether something was to be one way or
another, she would answer, “Do as you think best, my girl. ”
She fancied herself directly pursued by obstinate misfortune,
against which she made herself as fatalistic as an Oriental: the
habit of seeing her dreams evaporate, and her hopes come to
nothing, put her into the attitude of being afraid to undertake
anything; and she hesitated whole days before accomplishing the
most simple affair, convinced that she would only set out the
wrong way to do it, and that it would turn out badly. She
repeated continually, "I have never had any luck in my life. ”
Then it was Rosalie's turn to cry to her, “What would you say
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9811
if you had had to work for your bread, - if you were obliged to
get up every morning at six o'clock and go out for your day's
doings? There are lots of people who are obliged to do that,
nevertheless; and when such people becoine too old, they have to
die - just of their poverty. ”
A little more strength came to her when the air softened into
the first days of spring; but she used this new activity only to
throw herself more and more into sombre thoughts.
One morning, when she had climbed up into the garret to
hunt for something, she happened to open a trunk full of old
calendars; somebody had kept them, as certain country people
have a habit of doing. It seemed to her that in finding them
she found the very years themselves of her past life; and she
remained stricken with a strange and confused emotion before
that pile of cardboard squares.
She took them up and carried them down-stairs. They were
of all shapes, big and little. She began to arrange them year
by year, upon the table; and then, all at once, she found the very
first one that had belonged to her,— the same one that she had
brought to Peuples. She looked at this one a long time, with
the dates marked off by her the morning of her departure from
Rouen, the day after her going away from the convent. She
wept over it. Sadly and slowly the tears fell; the bitter tears
of an old woman whose life was spread out before her on that
table.
With the calendars came to her an idea that soon became a
sort of obsession; terrible, incessant, inexorable. She would try to
remember just whatever she had done from day to day during
all her life. She pinned the calendars against the walls and on
the carpet one after the other — those faded pieces of cardboard;
and so she came to pass hours face to face with them, continually
asking herself, “Now let me see, - what was it happened to me
that month ? ”
She had checked certain memorable days in the course of her
life, hence now and then she was able to recall the episodes of
an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them
together, connecting one by another all those little matters which
had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded
by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concen-
trated will, in bringing back to mind almost completely her two
first years at Peuples. Far-away souvenirs of her life returned to
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
her with a singular facility, and with a kind of relief in them;
but the later years gradually seemed to lose themselves in a
mist, - to become mixed one with another: and so Jeanne would
remain now and then an indefinite time, her head bowed toward
one of the calendars, her mind spellbound by the past, without
being able to remember whether it was in this or that calendar
that such or such a remembrance ought to be decided. She
ranged them around the room like the religious pictures that
point out the Way of the Cross in a church, - these tableaux
of days that were no more. Then she would abruptly set down
her chair before one of them; and there she would sit until
night came, immobile, staring at it, buried in her vague re-
searches.
All at once, when the sap began to awaken in the boughs
beneath the warmth of the sun; when the crops began to spring
up in the fields, the trees to become verdant; when the apple-
trees in the orchard swelled out roundly like rosy balls, and per-
fumed the plain,--then a great counter-agitation came over her;
she could not seem to stay still. She went and came; she left
the house and returned to it twenty times a day, and even took
now and then a stroll the length of the farming tracts, excited
to a sort of fever of regret. The sight of a daisy blossoming in
a tuft of grass, the flash of a ray of sun slipping down between
the leaves, the glittering of a strip of water in which the blue
sky was mirrored, -all moved her; awakened a tenderness in
her; gave her sensations very far away, like an echo of her
emotions as a young girl, when she went dreaming about the
country-side.
One morning the faithful Rosalie came later than usual into
her room, and said, setting down upon the table the bowl of cof-
fee: Come now, drink this. Denis is down-stairs waiting for us
at the door. We will go over to Peuples to-day: I've got some
business to attend to over there. ”
Jeanne thought that she was going to faint, so deep was her
emotion at the sound of that name, at the thought of going to
the home of her girlhood. She dressed herself, trembling with
emotion, frightened and tremulous at the mere idea of seeing
again that dear house.
A radiant sky spread out above over all the world; the horse,
in fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes went almost at a gallop.
When they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne could
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9813
hardly breathe, so much did her heart beat; and when she saw
from a distance the brick pillars of the boundary-line of her old
home, she exclaimed in a low voice two or three times, and as if
in spite of herself, “Qh! --oh! -oh! ” as if before things that
threatened to revolutionize all her heart.
They left the wagon with the Couillard family: then, while
Rosalie and her son went off to attend to their business, the care-
takers offered Jeanne the chance of taking a little turn around
the château, the present owners of it being absent; so they gave
her the keys.
Alone she set out; and when she was fairly before the old
manor house by the seaside, she stopped to look at its outside
once again. It had changed in nothing outside. The large,
grayish building that day showed upon its old walls the smile of
the sunshine. All the shutters were closed.
A bit of a dead branch fell from above upon her dress. She
raised her eyes. It came from the plane-tree. She drew near
the big tree with its smooth, pale bark; she caressed it with her
hand almost as if it had been an animal. Her foot struck some-
thing in the grass,-a fragment of rotten wood; lo! it was the
last fragment of the very bench on which she had sat so often
with those of her own family about her, so many years ago; the
very bench which had been set in place on the same day that
Julien had made his first visit.
She turned then to the double doors of the vestibule of the
house, and she had great trouble to open them; for the heavy
key, grown rusty, refused to turn in the lock. At length the
lock yielded with a heavy grinding of its springs; and the door,
a little obstinate itself, gave her entrance with a cloud of dust.
At once, and almost running, she went up-stairs to find what
had been her own room. She could hardly recognize it, hung
as it was with a light new paper: but throwing open a window,
she looked out and stood motionless, stirred even to the depth of
her being at the sight of all that landscape so much beloved; the
thicket, the elm-trees, the flat reaches, and the sea dotted with
brown sails, seeming motionless in the distance.
She began prowling about the great empty, lonely dwelling.
She even stopped to look at the discolorations on the walls; spots
familiar to her eyes. Once she stood before a little hole crushed
in the plaster by her father himself; who had often amused him-
self with making passages at arms, cane in hand, against the
partition wall, when he would happen to be passing this spot.
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Her mother's room -in it she found, stuck behind the door
in a dark corner near the bed, a fine gold hairpin; one which
she herself had stuck there so long ago, and which she had often
tried to find during the past years. Nobody had ever come across
it. She drew it out as a relic beyond all price, and kissed it,
and carried it away with her. Everywhere about the house she
walked, recognizing almost invisible marks in the hangings of
the rooms that had not been changed; she made out once more
those curious faces that a childish imagination gives often to the
patterns and stuffs, to marbles, and to shadings of the ceilings,
grown dingy with time. On she walked, with soundless footsteps,
wholly alone in the immense, silent house, as one who crosses a
cemetery. All her life was buried in it.
She went down-stairs to the drawing-room. It was sombre
behind the closed shutters: for some time she could not distin-
guish anything; then her eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
She recognized, little by little, the tall hangings with their pat-
terns of birds flitting about. Two arm-chairs were set before the
chimney, as if people had just quitted them; and even the odor
of the room, an odor which it had always kept, – that old vague,
sweet odor belonging to some old houses, - entered Jeanne's very
being, enwrapt her in souvenirs, intoxicated her memory. She
remained gasping, breathing in that breath of the past, and with
her eyes fixed upon those two chairs; for suddenly, in a sort of
hallucination which gave place to a positive idea, she saw — as
she had so often seen them - her father and her mother, sitting
there warming their feet by the fire. She drew back terrified,
struck her back against the edge of the door, caught at it to
keep herself from falling, but with her eyes still fixed upon the
chairs.
The vision disappeared. She remained forgetful of everything
during some moments; then slowly she recovered her self-pos-
session, and would have fled from the room, fearful of losing her
very senses. By chance, her glance fell against the door-post on
which she chanced to be leaning; and lo! before her eyes were
the marks that had been made to keep track of Poulet's height
as he was growing up!
The little marks climbed the painted wood with unequal in-
tervals; figures traced with the penknife noted down the different
ages and growths during the boy's life. Sometimes the jottings
were in the handwriting of her father, a large hand; sometimes
they were in her own smaller hand; sometimes in that of Aunt
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9815
Lison, a little tremulous. It seemed to her that the child of
other days was actually there, standing before her with his blond
hair, pressing his little forehead against the wall so that his
height could be measured; and the Baron was crying, “Why,
Jeanne! he has grown a whole centimetre since six weeks ago! '
She kissed the piece of wood in a frenzy of love and desolate-
ness.
But some one was calling her from outside. It was Rosalie's
voice: “Madame Jeanne, Madame Jeanne! We are waiting for
you, to have luncheon. ” She hurried away from the room half
out of her senses. She hardly understood anything that the oth-
ers said to her at luncheon. She ate the things that they put
on her plate; she listened without knowing what she heard, talk-
ing mechanically with the farming-women, who inquired about
her health; she let them embrace her, and herself saluted the
cheeks that were held out to her; and then got into the wagon
again.
When the high roof of the château was lost to her sight
across the trees, she felt in her very heart a direful wrench. It
seemed to her in her innermost spirit that now she had said
farewell forever to her old home!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by
E. Irenæus Stevenson
A NORMANDY OUTING: JEAN ROLAND'S LOVE-MAKING
From Pierre and Jean. Copyright 1890, by Hugh Craig.
Published by
Home Book Company
T"
HE harvest was ripe. Beside the dull green of the clover
and the bright green of the beets, the yellow stalks of
wheat illuminated the plains with a tawny golden gleam.
They seemed to have imbibed the sunlight that fell upon them.
Here and there the reapers were at work; and in the fields
attacked by the scythe the laborers were seen, swinging rhythmi-
cally as they swept the huge, wing-shaped blade over the surface
of the ground.
After a drive of two hours, the break turned to the left,
passed near a windmill in motion,- a gray melancholy wreck,
half rotten and condemned, the last survivor of the old mills, -
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9816
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
and then entered a pretty court-yard and drew up before a gay
little house, a celebrated inn of the district.
They started out, net on shoulder and basket on back. Ma-
dame Rosémilly was charming in this costume, with an unex-
pected, rustic, fearless style of beauty.
The petticoat borrowed from Alphonsine, coquettishly raised
and held by a few stitches, so as to enable the wearer to run
and leap without fear among the rocks, displayed her ankle and
the lower part of the calf — the firm calf of a woman at once
agile and strong. Her figure was loose, to leave all her move-
ments easy; and she had found, to cover her head, an immense
gardener's hat of yellow straw, with enormous flaps, to which a
sprig of tamarisk, holding one side cocked up, gave the daunt-
less air of a dashing mousquetaire.
Jean, since receiving his legacy, had asked himself every day
whether he should marry her or no. Every time he saw her,
he felt decided to make her his wife; but when he was alone,
he thought that meanwhile there was time to reflect.
She was
now not as rich as he was, for she possessed only twelve thou-
sand francs a year; — but in real-estate farms, and lots in Havre
on the docks, and these might in time be worth a large sum.
Their fortunes, then, were almost equivalent; and the young
widow assuredly pleased him much.
As he saw her walking before him on this day, he thought,
«Well, I must decide. Beyond question, I could not do bet-
ter. ”
They followed the slope of a little valley, descending from the
village to the cliff; and the cliff at the end of this valley looked
down on the sea from a height of nearly three hundred feet.
Framed in by the green coast, sinking away to the left and
right, a spacious triangle of water, silvery blue in the sunlight,
was visible; and a sail, scarcely perceptible, looked like an insect
down below. The sky, filled with radiance, was so blended with
the water that the eye could not distinguish where one ended and
the other began; and the two ladies, who were in front of the
three men, cast on this clear horizon the clear outline of their
compact figures.
Jean, with ardent glance, saw speeding before him the enti-
cing hat of Madame Rosémilly. Every movement urged him to
those decisive resolutions which the timid and the hesitating take
abruptly. The warm air, in which was blended the scent of the
## p. 9817 (#225) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9817
coast, of the reeds, the clover, the grasses, and the marine odor
of the rocks exposed by the tide, animated him with a gentle
intoxication; and he decided, more and more at every step, at
every second, at every look he cast on the graceful outline of
the young woman - he decided to hesitate no longer, to tell her
that he loved her and wanted to marry her. The fishing party
would be of service: it would render a tête-à-tête more easy; and
besides, it would furnish a pretty background, a pretty scene for
words of love, with their feet in a basin of limpid water, as they
watched the long feelers of the shrimps darting through the sea.
weeds.
When they reached the end of the valley at the edge of the
bluff, they perceived a little path that ran down the cliff; and
below them, between the sea and the foot of the precipice, about
half-way down, a wondrous chaos of enormous rocks, that had
fallen or been hurled down, heaped on each other on
a kind
of grassy broken plain which disappeared toward the south, and
which had been formed by ancient landslips. In the long strip
of brushwood and turf, tossed, one might say, by the throes of a
volcano, the fallen rocks resembled the ruins of a great vanished
city that once on a time had looked down on the ocean, itself
dominated by the white and endless wall of the cliff.
“How beautiful! ” said Madame Rosémilly, pausing.
Jean joined her, and with beating heart offered his hand to
guide her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.
They went on in front; while Beausire, stiffening himself on
his short legs, held out his bent arm to Madame Roland, who
was dazed by the blank depth.
Roland and Pierre came last; and the doctor had to support
his father, who was so troubled by vertigo that he sat down, and
thus slid from step to step.
The young people, who descended at the head of the party,
went rapidly, and suddenly caught sight of a streamlet of pure
water springing from a little hole in the cliff, by the side of a
wooden bench, which formed a resting-place about the middle of
the slope. The streamlet at first spread into a basin about the
size of a wash-hand bowl, which it had excavated for itself; and
then, falling in a cascade of about two feet in height, flowed
across the path where a carpet of cress had grown, and then
disappeared in the reeds and grass, across the level where the
landslips were heaped up.
"How thirsty I am! ” cried Madame Rosémilly.
## p. 9818 (#226) ###########################################
9818
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
)
But how to drink? She tried to collect in the hollow of her
hand the water which escaped between her fingers. Jean had a
bright idea; he placed a stone in the road, and she knelt on it to
drink from the very source with her lips, which were thus raised
to the same height.
When she raised her head, covered with glittering drops
sprinkled by thousands over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, her
bust, - Jean, bending toward her, whispered:-
“How pretty you are! ”
She replied in the tone one assumes to scold a child:
“Will you hold your tongue ? ”
These were the first words of flirtation which they had ex-
changed.
“Come,” said Jean, rather discomfited, “let us be off before
they overtake us. "
In fact, he was aware that Captain Beausire was quite close
to them, and was descending backwards in order to support
Madame Roland with both hands; while, higher up and farther
away, M. Roland, in a sitting posture, was dragging himself down
by his feet and elbows with the speed of a tortoise, and Pierre
went before him to superintend his movements.
The path became less steep, and formed now a sloping road
that skirted the enormous blocks that had fallen from above.
Madame Rosémilly and Jean began to run, and were soon on the
shingle. They crossed it to gain the rocks, which extended in a
long and flat surface covered with seaweed, in which innumerable
flashes of water glittered. The tide was low and far out, behind
this slimy plain of sea-wrack with its shining green and black
growths.
Jean rolled up his trousers to the knee and his sleeves to the
elbow, so as to wet himself with impunity, and cried “Forward! ”
as he boldly leaped into the first pool that presented itself.
With more prudence, though with equal determination to wade
into the water at once, the young woman went around the narrow
basin with timid steps,- for she slipped on the slimy weeds.
"Do you see anything ? ” she said.
“Yes, I see your face reflected in the water.
“If you only see that, you will not have any fishing to boast
of. ”
He said in a tender voice:
"Ah, that is fishing I shall prefer over all!
She laughed.
»
»
## p. 9819 (#227) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9819
((
« Try, then, and you'll see how it slips through your net. ”
Well, if you like — »
“I should like to see you catch some prawns — and nothing
more — just at present. ”
“You are cruel. Let us go farther: there is nothing here. ”
He offered her his hand to steady her on the greasy rocks.
She leaned on it rather timidly; and he, all at once, felt himself
invaded by love, throbbing with desire, hungering for her, as if
the passion that was germinating in him had waited for that day
to burst forth.
They soon arrived at a deeper crevice, where, beneath the
rippling water flowing to the distant sea by an invisible fissure,
long, fine, strangely colored seaweeds, with tresses of rose and
green, floated as if they were swimming.
Madame Rosémilly exclaimed:-
“Look, look, I see one — a big one, a very big one, down
there! »
He perceived it in turn, and went down into the crevice,
although the water wet him to the waist.
But the creature, moving its long feelers, quietly retired be-
fore the net. Jean drove it toward the wreck, sure of catching
it there. When it found itself blockaded, it made a sudden dash
over the net, crossed the pool, and disappeared.
The young woman, who was watching in panting eagerness
his attempt, could not refrain from crying: -
"Ah, clumsy!
He was vexed, and without thinking, dragged his net through
a pool full of weeds. As he raised it to the surface, he saw in it
three large transparent prawns, which had been blindly dragged
from their invisible hiding-place.
He presented them in triumph to Madame Rosémilly, who
dared not touch them for fear of the sharp, tooth-like point which
arms their heads. At last she decided to take them; and seiz-
ing between two of her fingers the thin end of their beard, she
placed them one after the other in her basket, with some weed
to keep them alive.
Then, on finding a shallower piece of water, she entered it
with hesitating steps, and catching her breath as the cold struck
her feet, began to fish herself. She was skillful and cunning,
with a supple wrist and a sportman's instinct. At about every
cast she brought out some victims, deceived and surprised by
the ingenious slowness with which she swept the pool.
»
## p. 9820 (#228) ###########################################
9820
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
»
Jean was taking nothing; but he followed her step by step,
touched her dress, bent over her, pretended to be in despair at
his awkwardness, and wished her to teach him.
«Show me how," he said; « show me! ”
Then, as their two faces were reflected one beside the other
in the clear water, which the deep-growing seaweeds formed into
a limpid mirror, Jean smiled at the face so near his which looked
up to him from below; and at times threw to it, from the tips
of his fingers, a kiss which seemed to fall on it.
“You are very tiresome,” the young woman said. “My dear
fellow, never do two things at the same time. ”
He replied:-
“I am only doing one. I love you. "
She drew herself up erect, and said in a serious tone:
Come
now, what is the matter with you for the last ten
minutes? Have you lost your head ? »
“No, I have not lost my head. I love you, and at last dare
to tell you so. "
They were now standing in the pool of sea-water that rose
nearly to their knees, and with their dripping hands leaning on
their nets, looked into the depth of each other's eyes.
She resumed in a playful and rather annoyed tone: -
“You are badly advised to speak to me thus at this moment.
Could you not wait another day, and not spoil my fishing ? ”
He replied:-
“Pardon me, but I could not keep silence. I have loved you
a long time. To-day you have made me lose my senses. ”
Then she seemed at once to take her resolution, and to resign
herself to talk business and renounce amusement.
"Let us sit on this rock," she said: “we shall be able to talk
quietly. ”
They climbed on a rock a little higher; and when they were
settled, side by side, their feet hanging down in the full sunshine,
she rejoined:-
My friend, you are not a child, and I am not a girl. Both
of us know what we are about, and can weigh all the conse-
quences of our acts. If you decide to-day to declare your love
to me, I suppose naturally you wish to marry me. ”
He had scarcely expected such a clear statement of the situa-
tion, and answered sheepishly: –
“Why, yes! ”
“ Have you spoken to your father and mother ? »
(
»
## p. 9821 (#229) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9821
“No. I wished to know if you would accept me. ”
She extended to him her hand, which was still wet, and as he
placed his own in it with fervor -
"I am willing,” she said. “I believe you good and loyal.
But do not forget that I would not displease your parents. ”
"Do you think that my mother has foreseen nothing, and that
she would love you as she does if she did not desire a marriage
between us ? »
" True: I am rather confused. "
They were silent. On his part, he was astonished that she
was so little confused and so reasonable. He had expected some
pretty airs and graces, refusals which say yes, a whole coquettish
comedy of love blended with fishing and the splashing of water.
And it was all over; he felt himself bound and married in a
score of words. They had nothing more to say to each other,
since they were in full accord; and they both now remained
somewhat embarrassed at what had passed so rapidly between
them, perhaps even somewhat confused, - not daring to speak
further, not daring to fish further, not knowing what to do.
Translation of Hugh Craig.
THE PIECE OF STRING
From «The Odd Number. Copyright 1889, by Harper & Brothers
I'
T WAS market day, and over all the roads round Goderville the
peasants and their wives were coming towards the town. The
men walked easily, lurching the whole body forward at every
step. Their long legs were twisted and deformed by the slow,
painful labors of the country: by bending over to plow, which
is what also makes their left shoulders too high and their figures
crooked; and by reaping corn, which obliges them for steadiness'
sake to spread their knees too wide. Their starched blue blouses,
shining as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs with
little patterns of white stitch-work, and blown up big around
their bony bodies, seemed exactly like balloons about to soar, but
putting forth a head, two arms, and two feet.
Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the end
of a rope. And just behind the animal, beating it over the
back with a leaf-covered branch to hasten its pace, went their
wives, carrying large baskets from which came forth the heads
## p. 9822 (#230) ###########################################
9822
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
of chickens or of ducks. These women walked with steps far
shorter and quicker than the men; their figures, withered and
upright, were adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their
flat bosoms; and they enveloped their heads each in a white
cloth, close fastened round the hair and surmounted by a cap.
Now a char-à-banc passed by, drawn by a jerky-paced nag. It
shook up strangely the two men on the seat. And the woman
at the bottom of the cart held fast to its sides to lessen the hard
joltings.
In the market place at Goderville was a great crowd, a min-
gled multitude of men and beasts. The horns of the cattle, the
high and long-napped hats of wealthy peasants, the head-dresses
of the women, came to the surface of that sea. And voices
clamorous, sharp, shrill, made a continuous and savage din. Above
it a huge burst of laughter from the sturdy lungs of a merry
yokel would sometimes sound, and sometimes a long bellow from
a cow tied fast to the wall of a house.
It all smelled of the stable, of milk, of hay, and of perspira-
tion; giving off that half human, half animal odor which is pecul-
iar to the men of the fields.
Maître Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goder.
ville, and was taking his way towards the square, when he
perceived on the ground a little piece of string. Maître Hauche-
corne, economical like all true Normans, reflected that everything
was worth picking up which could be of any use; and he stooped
down — but painfully, because he suffered with rheumatism. He
took the bit of thin cord from the ground, and was carefully pre-
paring to roll it up when he saw Maître Malandain the harness-
maker on his doorstep, looking at him. They had once had a
quarrel about a halter, and they had remained angry, bearing
malice on both sides. Maître Hauchecorne was overcome with a
sort of shame at being seen by his enemy looking in the dirt so
for a bit of string. He quickly hid his find beneath his blouse;
then in the pocket of his breeches; then pretended to be still
looking for something on the ground which he did not discover;
and at last went off towards the market-place, with his head bent
forward, and a body almost doubled in two by rheumatic pains.
He lost himself immediately in the crowd, which was clamor-
ous, slow, and agitated by interminable bargains. The peasants
examined the cows, went off, came back, always in great per-
plexity and fear of being cheated, never quite daring to decide,
## p. 9823 (#231) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9823
spying at the eye of the seller, trying ceaselessly to discover the
tricks of the man and the defect in the beast.
The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet,
had pulled out the poultry, which lay upon the ground, tied by
the legs, with eyes scared, with combs scarlet.
They listened to propositions, maintaining their prices, with a
dry manner, with an impassive face; or suddenly, perhaps, decid-
ing to take the lower price which was offered, they cried out to
the customer, who was departing slowly:-
“All right: I'll let you have them, Maît' Anthime. ”
Then, little by little, the square became empty; and when
the Angelus struck midday, those who lived at a distance poured
into the inns.
At Jourdain's, the great room was filled with eaters, just as
the vast court was filled with vehicles of every sort, — wagons,
gigs, char-à-bancs, tilburies, tilt-carts which have no name, yel-
low with mud, misshapen, pieced together, raising their shafts to
heaven like two arms, or it may be with their nose in the dirt
and their rear in the air,
Just opposite to where the diners were at table, the huge
fireplace, full of clear flame, threw a lively heat on the backs of
those who sat along the right. Three spits were turning, loaded
with chickens, with pigeons, and with joints of mutton; and a
delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy gushing over crisp
brown skin, took wing from the hearth, kindled merriment, caused
mouths to water.
All the aristocracy of the plow were eating there, at Maît'
Jourdain's, the innkeeper's,-a dealer in horses also, and a sharp
fellow who had made a pretty penny in his day.
The dishes were passed round, were emptied, with jugs of
yellow cider. Every one told of his affairs, of his purchases and
his sales. They asked news about the crops.
The weather was
good for green stuffs, but a little wet for wheat.
All of a sudden the drum rolled in the court before the house.
Every one, except some of the most indifferent, was on his feet
at once and ran to the door, to the windows, with his mouth still
full, and his napkin in his hand.
When the public crier had finished his tattoo, he called forth
in a jerky voice, making his pauses out of time:-
“Be it known to the inhabitants of Goderville, and in general
to all
-persons present at the market, that there has been lost
## p. 9824 (#232) ###########################################
9824
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
this morning, on the Beuzeville road, between – nine and ten
o'clock, a pocket-book of black leather, containing five hundred
francs and business papers. You are requested to return it— to
the mayor's office at once, or to Maître Fortuné Houlbrèque of
Manneville. There will be fifty francs reward. ”
Then the man departed. They heard once more at a distance
the dull beatings on the drum, and the faint voice of the crier.
Then they began to talk of this event, reckoning up the
chances which Maître Houlbrèque had of finding or of not find-
ing his pocket-book again.
And the meal went on.
They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gen-
darmes appeared on the threshold.
He asked:-
"Is Maître Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, here? ”
Maître Hauchecorne, seated at the other end of the table,
answered:-
«Here I am. ”
And the corporal resumed:-
“Maître Hauchecorne, will you have the kindness to come with
me to the mayor's office ? M. le Maire would like to speak to
you. ”
The peasant, surprised and uneasy, gulped down his little glass
of cognac, got up, and — even worse bent over than in the morn-
ing, since the first steps after a rest were always particularly dif-
ficult — started off, repeating :
“Here I am, here I am. ”
And he followed the corporal.
The mayor was waiting for him, seated in an arm-chair. He
was the notary of the place, a tall, grave man of pompous speech.
"Maître Hauchecorne," said he, “this morning, on the Beuze-
ville road, you were seen to pick up the pocket-book lost by
Maître Houlbrèque of Manneville. ”
The countryman, speechless, gazed at the mayor; frightened
already by this suspicion, which rested on him he knew not why.
“I-I picked up that pocket-book ? »
“Yes, you. ”
"I swear I didn't even know nothing about it at all. ”
« You were seen. ”
They saw me – me? Who is that who saw me?
"M. Malandain, the harness-maker. ”
>
(
ac
>
## p. 9825 (#233) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9825
Then the old man remembered, understood, and reddening
with anger:
:-
"Ah! he saw me, did he, the rascal ? He saw me picking up
this string here, M'sieu' le Maire. »
And fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out of
it the little end of string.
But the mayor incredulously shook his head :-
«You will not make me believe, Maître Hauchecorne, that
M. Malandain, who is a man worthy of credit, has mistaken this
string for a pocket-book. ”
The peasant, furious, raised his hand and spit as if to attest
his good faith, repeating: -
For all that, it is the truth of the good God, the blessed
truth, M'sieu' le Maire. There! on my soul and my salvation I
repeat it. ”
The mayor continued:
"After picking up the thing in question, you even looked
for some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not
dropped out of it. ”
The good man was suffocated with indignation and with fear.
“If they can say —! If they can say such lies as that to slan-
der an honest man! If they can say — !
lives; are sometimes touching, sometimes odious; and never achieve
greatness either in heroism or in wickedness.
They are not gay, these stories; and the kind of amusement they
afford is strongly mixed with irony, pity, and contempt. Gayety,
whether brutal, frank, mocking, or delicate, never leaves this bitter
taste in the heart. How pitiful in its folly, in its vanity, in its weak-
ness, is the humanity which loves, weeps, or agitates in the tales of
Maupassant! There, virtue if awkward is never recompensed, nor vice
if skillful punished; mothers are not always saints, nor sons always
grateful and respectful; the guilty are often ignorant of remorse.
Then are these beings immoral ? To tell the truth, they are guided
by their instincts, by events, submissive to the laws of necessity, and
apparently released by the author from all responsibility.
Such is the individual humor of Guy de Maupassant, - a humor
rarely joyous, without sparkling shocks of repartee; a humor tinged
with bitterness and contempt, arising usually from the seriousness of
ridiculous people and from the ridiculousness of serious people, and
nearly always from the universal powerlessness to advance beyond
mediocrity. And if Maupassant is cruel to his heroes, he would
doubtless say that it is because life too is cruel, unjust, sad, deceiv-
ing; and that beauty, virtue, and happiness are only exceptions.
Thence the pessimistic tendency of his work. Nothing shows this
original pessimism - rough and lucid, emotional without lyricism --
better than the novel Une Vie. ' It is the story of a co
commonplace
existence: the life of a country woman, married to a brutal and ava-
ricious country squire, delivered from him through a neighbor's ven-
geance, deceived by her son as well as by her husband, and fixing
her obstinate hope upon the grandchild, who perhaps, if death does
not liberate her in time, will add one supreme deception to all the
others. This woman, who believes herself the victim of a special
fatality, has against her nothing but the chance of a bad choice,
and the weakness of her own tender spirit, incapable of struggle or
action. She is good, pure, and perhaps more sympathetic than any
other of Maupassant's heroines. Her life is like many other lives,
and doubtless the sadness which emanates from it widens to infinity.
In the short stories, this pessimistic tendency grows finer and
sharper so as sometimes to find expression in a tragic element.
But with Maupassant the tragic is of very special essence, and not
## p. 9806 (#214) ###########################################
9806
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
>
expressed in grand melodramatic effects or catastrophes as in roman-
ticism. Nor does it consist in the classic debate between duty and
passion. No, it consists rather in a wholly physical emotion, excited
by the wretchedness of certain destinies, and evoking in its turn the
mysterious menaces which hover over us. Disease, madness, death,
are in ambush behind every door of our house; and no
one has
expressed better than Maupassant the terror of the being who feels
their breath or sees them face to face. No one has felt with deeper
sorrow behind this human misery, the frightful solitude of man
among men; the black chasm which separates us from those whom
we love; the impossibility of uniting two hearts or two thoughts;
the slow succession of the little miseries of life; the fatal disorgan-
ization of a solitary existence whose dreams have vanished; and the
reason of those tragic endings which only nervous, sensitive minds
can understand.
This enables us to grasp the very principle of Maupassant's pes-
simism, and of this disorganization in which his clear and vigorous
intellect foundered. Even his first volume, Des Vers,' showed this
haunting thought of death, this sadness of the supersensitive soul har-
assed and unsatisfied, powerless to take pleasure in the joys which
are scattered through the universe. In the two little poems (La
Venus Rustique (The Country Venus) and (Au Bord de l'Eau' (On
the Water's Brink), there is as it were an intoxication with life, which
at first appears the sane and happy expression of a robust tempera-
ment, but which quickly ends in nostalgia and horror of nothingness.
And here is the keynote to Maupassant's sensualism: it is the fran-
tic desire to concentrate in the senses of a single man all that the
material world contains of delight,— colors, sounds, perfumes, beauty
under all its forms; it is the adoration of matter, and it is the de-
spair of a being crushed by the blind, implacable, and eternal divinity
which it has chosen. What does feeling become in this pagan joy,
this mother of pains and slaveries? It is easy to see: love is as fatal
as death. It is a force of nature which we can neither control nor
avoid, nor fix according to our wish; and its very nature explains
the derangements of hearts, the betrayals, the jealousies, which deck
it in fictitious sentimentality. Final conclusion: our free will, our
liberty, are illusions; and morality is suppressed at the same time
that remorses, internal conflicts, duties are reduced to mere conven-
tions useful to society.
This is the principle of Maupassant's pessimism. As is evident, it
springs directly from his naturalism. His conception of art and his
conception of life are closely allied. This pessimism became more
and more accentuated from one work to another; from Une Vie'
(1883) to Notre Cour) (1892). But in the measure of the novelist's
## p. 9807 (#215) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9807
more and more profound investigation of life, he imperceptibly and to
a certain degree substituted psychological study for realism according
to Flaubert's formula. This evolution of Guy de Maupassant's talent
asserts itself in Pierre et Jean (1888), and is still more clearly
delineated in Fort comme la Mort' and Notre Cæur. ' We are far
away from the Boule de Suifs' and the like. His observation has
become acuter, his language better shaded. There is a more flexible
precision in the study of more delicate sentiments and of more
complicated minds. Is not the love of the old painter Bertin for
the daughter of the woman he has passionately loved an exceptional
sentiment ? It was a ticklish subject; and the author presented it
very ably, without brutalities. We cannot help pitying the woman
who feels herself growing old, the man who cherished in his friend's
daughter the young beauty of the mother whom he once loved. But
the charming child is ignorant of the harm she is innocently doing.
She marries, and the old painter bears his passion with him 'in death;
while Madame de Guilleroy burns the old letters, their love letters,
found in a drawer, and Olivier's resigned agony is lighted up by the
reflection of their blazing leaves.
This novel was less successful than its predecessors. The ordi-
nary public, who had enjoyed Maître Hauchecorne) and Mademoi-
selle Fifi,' thought that its author had been changed. It asserted
that the success of the psychologic novel had fascinated Maupassant.
Perhaps we should see in this new phase of his talent only a conse-
quence of the modification which years and the events of his inti-
mate life had little by little brought about. Notre Cour) would
confirm this view. It resembles an autobiography. It is the eternal
misunderstanding between man and woman, — drawing near for an
ant, never united, and never giving the same words the same
meaning. What an exquisite charming face is that of Michelle de
Burne! a costly flower blossoming after centuries of extreme civiliza-
tion; a positive, gently egoistic being, in whom nothing is left of
primitive woman except the need of dazzling others and of being
adored. Simple sincere Elizabeth may console André Mariolle; but
neither brilliant orchid nor humble daisy can replace or make the
other forgotten. That is why André, uniting the two in a single
bouquet, renounces the torturing dream of one only love.
Thus Guy
de Maupassant had been led by the progress of his observation and
his analysis to penetrate into the intimate regions of the heart, where
our most secret and most diverse sentiments hide, struggle, suppli-
cate, and contend with each other. This progress of the novelist is
natural. As his observation grows sharper and finer, it penetrates
deeper; proceeds from faces to minds, and from gestures to feelings.
Psychological analysis appears, and with it reflection. The mind falls
## p. 9808 (#216) ###########################################
9808
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
back upon itself; the man returns to his own thoughts, his dreams,
his emotions. He descends into his own heart, and irony becomes pity
and tenderness. His art is perhaps more human.
Neither Fort comme la Mort) nor Notre Cour,' Guy de Mau-
passant's last two novels, shows any trace of insanity. Yet when
the world learned in 1893 that this terrible disease had seized the
famous novelist, those who had read and studied his work were only
half surprised. It was then some years since the reading of Horla'
had made them anxious.
What is Horla’? – It is not a spirit, it is not a phantom of the
imagination. It is not any kind of a creature either natural or su-
pernatural. It is not even an illusion of sick senses, a hallucination
of fever. No; it is something both more real and less real, less dis-
quieting and more so: it is the unknown hostility surrounding one in
the invisible. It is everywhere,- in the bed curtains, in the water
pitcher, in the fire lighted to drive it from the house. Dream of a
madman, whom the wing of insanity had brushed! Already in 1884,
in the story entitled Lui, there had been signs of this fear of fears,
fear of the spasms of a wandering mind, fear of that horrible sensa-
tion of incomprehensible terror:-“I am afraid of the walls, of the
furniture, of the familiar objects which seem to me to assume a kind
of animal life. Above all I fear the horrible confusion of my thought,
of my reason escaping, entangled and scattered by an invisible and
mysterious anguish. ”
Sensuality, pessimism, obsession of nothingness, hallucinations of
the strange,- these different states cruelly asserted their logical
dependence in the intellectual history of Guy de Maupassant. The
mind which had seemed so profoundly sane and free from any mor-
bid germ became disordered, and then shattered entirely. The uni-
verse of forms, sounds, colors, and perfumes, to which he had so
complaisantly surrendered himself, became uninhabitable. Perhaps it
is necessary that in its attitude toward matter the mind should
always retain a kind of distrust, and dominate it without yielding
completely to its sorceries and enchantments. To this feast Maupas-
sant had opened all his senses. The day came when he felt his ideas
flying around him, he said, like butterflies. With his habitual grasp
he still sought to seize them while they were already far from his
empty brain.
Guy de Maupassant died in 1893, when forty-three
years old. His robust constitution could not resist the excessive ex-
penditure of all his energies.
Firmin Roz
## p. 9809 (#217) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9809
THE LAST YEARS OF MADAME JEANNE
From A Life)
J
EANNE did not go out any more. She hardly bestirred herself.
Each morning she got up at the same hour; took notice of
the weather outside; and then went down and seated her-
self before the fire in the hall.
She would remain there whole days, immovable, her eyes
fixed upon the flame, giving course to lamentable thoughts, fol-
lowing the melancholy retrospect of her sorrows. Little by little
darkness would invade the small room as the day closed, without
her having made any other movement than to put more wood on
the fire. Then Rosalie would bring the lamp, exclaiming to her,
"Come, come, Madame Jeanne! You must shake yourself up a
bit, or really you won't have any appetite this evening for sup-
per. ”
__
Often, too, she was persecuted by fixed ideas, which besieged
and tortured her; by insignificant preoccupations,— mere trifles
which took in her dim brain a false importance.
More than anything else she took to living over the past, –
her past that lay furthest back, haunted by the early days of
her life, - by her wedding trip, over there in Corsica. Suddenly
there would rise up before her, landscapes of that island so long
forgotten, seen now in the embers of the fireplace: she would
recall all the details, all the trivial little episodes, every face
once met in that time; the fine head of the guide that they had
employed — Jean Ravoli — kept coming before her, and she some-
times fancied that she heard his voice.
Then too she would fall into a revery upon the happy years
of her son's childhood, when she and Aunt Lison, with Paul, had
worked in the salad-bed together, kneeling side by side in the soft
ground, the two women rivals in their effort to amuse the child
as they toiled among the young plants.
So musing, her lips would murmur, “Poulet, Poulet! my little
Poulet,” — as if she were speaking to him; and, her revery broken
as she spoke, she would try during whole hours to write the boy's
name in the air, shaping with her outstretched finger these letters.
She would trace them slowly in space before the fire, sometimes
imagining that she really saw them, then believing that her eyes
had deceived her; and so she would rewrite the capital P again,
her old arm trembling with fatigue, but forcing herself to trace
XV11-614
## p. 9810 (#218) ###########################################
9810
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
was
the name to its end; then when she had finished it she would
write it over again. At last she could not write it any more.
She would confuse everything,— form other words at random,
enfeebled almost to idiocy.
All the little manias of those who live solitary took hold of
her. The least change in her surroundings irritated her,
Rosalie would often insist upon making her walk about, and
even carry her off to the roadside: but Jeanne at the end of
twenty minutes would always end up by saying, “No, I am too
tired out, my good girl;” and then she would sit down on the
edge of the green roadside.
Indeed, movement of any
kind soon distasteful to her,
and she would stay in bed in the morning as late as possible.
Ever since her infancy one particular habit had remained tena-
ciously with her,—that of jumping up out of bed just as soon as
she had swallowed her morning coffee. She was very much set
on that way of breakfasting, and the privation would have been
felt more than anything else. Each morning she would await
Rosalie's arrival at her bedside with an exaggerated impatience;
and just as soon as the cup was put upon the table at her side,
she would start up and empty it almost greedily, and then begin
to dress herself at once.
But now, little by little, she had grown into the habit of
dreamily waiting some seconds after she had put back the cup
into the plate; then she would settle herself again in her bed;
and then, little by little, would lengthen her idleness from day
to day, until Rosalie would come back furious at such delay, and
would dress her mistress almost by force.
Besides all this, she did not seem to have now any appear-
ance of a will about matters; and each time that Rosalie would
ask her opinion as to whether something was to be one way or
another, she would answer, “Do as you think best, my girl. ”
She fancied herself directly pursued by obstinate misfortune,
against which she made herself as fatalistic as an Oriental: the
habit of seeing her dreams evaporate, and her hopes come to
nothing, put her into the attitude of being afraid to undertake
anything; and she hesitated whole days before accomplishing the
most simple affair, convinced that she would only set out the
wrong way to do it, and that it would turn out badly. She
repeated continually, "I have never had any luck in my life. ”
Then it was Rosalie's turn to cry to her, “What would you say
## p. 9811 (#219) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9811
if you had had to work for your bread, - if you were obliged to
get up every morning at six o'clock and go out for your day's
doings? There are lots of people who are obliged to do that,
nevertheless; and when such people becoine too old, they have to
die - just of their poverty. ”
A little more strength came to her when the air softened into
the first days of spring; but she used this new activity only to
throw herself more and more into sombre thoughts.
One morning, when she had climbed up into the garret to
hunt for something, she happened to open a trunk full of old
calendars; somebody had kept them, as certain country people
have a habit of doing. It seemed to her that in finding them
she found the very years themselves of her past life; and she
remained stricken with a strange and confused emotion before
that pile of cardboard squares.
She took them up and carried them down-stairs. They were
of all shapes, big and little. She began to arrange them year
by year, upon the table; and then, all at once, she found the very
first one that had belonged to her,— the same one that she had
brought to Peuples. She looked at this one a long time, with
the dates marked off by her the morning of her departure from
Rouen, the day after her going away from the convent. She
wept over it. Sadly and slowly the tears fell; the bitter tears
of an old woman whose life was spread out before her on that
table.
With the calendars came to her an idea that soon became a
sort of obsession; terrible, incessant, inexorable. She would try to
remember just whatever she had done from day to day during
all her life. She pinned the calendars against the walls and on
the carpet one after the other — those faded pieces of cardboard;
and so she came to pass hours face to face with them, continually
asking herself, “Now let me see, - what was it happened to me
that month ? ”
She had checked certain memorable days in the course of her
life, hence now and then she was able to recall the episodes of
an entire month, bringing them up one by one, grouping them
together, connecting one by another all those little matters which
had preceded or followed some important event. She succeeded
by sheer force of attention, by force of memory and of concen-
trated will, in bringing back to mind almost completely her two
first years at Peuples. Far-away souvenirs of her life returned to
## p. 9812 (#220) ###########################################
9812
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
her with a singular facility, and with a kind of relief in them;
but the later years gradually seemed to lose themselves in a
mist, - to become mixed one with another: and so Jeanne would
remain now and then an indefinite time, her head bowed toward
one of the calendars, her mind spellbound by the past, without
being able to remember whether it was in this or that calendar
that such or such a remembrance ought to be decided. She
ranged them around the room like the religious pictures that
point out the Way of the Cross in a church, - these tableaux
of days that were no more. Then she would abruptly set down
her chair before one of them; and there she would sit until
night came, immobile, staring at it, buried in her vague re-
searches.
All at once, when the sap began to awaken in the boughs
beneath the warmth of the sun; when the crops began to spring
up in the fields, the trees to become verdant; when the apple-
trees in the orchard swelled out roundly like rosy balls, and per-
fumed the plain,--then a great counter-agitation came over her;
she could not seem to stay still. She went and came; she left
the house and returned to it twenty times a day, and even took
now and then a stroll the length of the farming tracts, excited
to a sort of fever of regret. The sight of a daisy blossoming in
a tuft of grass, the flash of a ray of sun slipping down between
the leaves, the glittering of a strip of water in which the blue
sky was mirrored, -all moved her; awakened a tenderness in
her; gave her sensations very far away, like an echo of her
emotions as a young girl, when she went dreaming about the
country-side.
One morning the faithful Rosalie came later than usual into
her room, and said, setting down upon the table the bowl of cof-
fee: Come now, drink this. Denis is down-stairs waiting for us
at the door. We will go over to Peuples to-day: I've got some
business to attend to over there. ”
Jeanne thought that she was going to faint, so deep was her
emotion at the sound of that name, at the thought of going to
the home of her girlhood. She dressed herself, trembling with
emotion, frightened and tremulous at the mere idea of seeing
again that dear house.
A radiant sky spread out above over all the world; the horse,
in fits and starts of liveliness, sometimes went almost at a gallop.
When they entered into the commune of Etouvent, Jeanne could
## p. 9813 (#221) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9813
hardly breathe, so much did her heart beat; and when she saw
from a distance the brick pillars of the boundary-line of her old
home, she exclaimed in a low voice two or three times, and as if
in spite of herself, “Qh! --oh! -oh! ” as if before things that
threatened to revolutionize all her heart.
They left the wagon with the Couillard family: then, while
Rosalie and her son went off to attend to their business, the care-
takers offered Jeanne the chance of taking a little turn around
the château, the present owners of it being absent; so they gave
her the keys.
Alone she set out; and when she was fairly before the old
manor house by the seaside, she stopped to look at its outside
once again. It had changed in nothing outside. The large,
grayish building that day showed upon its old walls the smile of
the sunshine. All the shutters were closed.
A bit of a dead branch fell from above upon her dress. She
raised her eyes. It came from the plane-tree. She drew near
the big tree with its smooth, pale bark; she caressed it with her
hand almost as if it had been an animal. Her foot struck some-
thing in the grass,-a fragment of rotten wood; lo! it was the
last fragment of the very bench on which she had sat so often
with those of her own family about her, so many years ago; the
very bench which had been set in place on the same day that
Julien had made his first visit.
She turned then to the double doors of the vestibule of the
house, and she had great trouble to open them; for the heavy
key, grown rusty, refused to turn in the lock. At length the
lock yielded with a heavy grinding of its springs; and the door,
a little obstinate itself, gave her entrance with a cloud of dust.
At once, and almost running, she went up-stairs to find what
had been her own room. She could hardly recognize it, hung
as it was with a light new paper: but throwing open a window,
she looked out and stood motionless, stirred even to the depth of
her being at the sight of all that landscape so much beloved; the
thicket, the elm-trees, the flat reaches, and the sea dotted with
brown sails, seeming motionless in the distance.
She began prowling about the great empty, lonely dwelling.
She even stopped to look at the discolorations on the walls; spots
familiar to her eyes. Once she stood before a little hole crushed
in the plaster by her father himself; who had often amused him-
self with making passages at arms, cane in hand, against the
partition wall, when he would happen to be passing this spot.
## p. 9814 (#222) ###########################################
9814
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Her mother's room -in it she found, stuck behind the door
in a dark corner near the bed, a fine gold hairpin; one which
she herself had stuck there so long ago, and which she had often
tried to find during the past years. Nobody had ever come across
it. She drew it out as a relic beyond all price, and kissed it,
and carried it away with her. Everywhere about the house she
walked, recognizing almost invisible marks in the hangings of
the rooms that had not been changed; she made out once more
those curious faces that a childish imagination gives often to the
patterns and stuffs, to marbles, and to shadings of the ceilings,
grown dingy with time. On she walked, with soundless footsteps,
wholly alone in the immense, silent house, as one who crosses a
cemetery. All her life was buried in it.
She went down-stairs to the drawing-room. It was sombre
behind the closed shutters: for some time she could not distin-
guish anything; then her eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
She recognized, little by little, the tall hangings with their pat-
terns of birds flitting about. Two arm-chairs were set before the
chimney, as if people had just quitted them; and even the odor
of the room, an odor which it had always kept, – that old vague,
sweet odor belonging to some old houses, - entered Jeanne's very
being, enwrapt her in souvenirs, intoxicated her memory. She
remained gasping, breathing in that breath of the past, and with
her eyes fixed upon those two chairs; for suddenly, in a sort of
hallucination which gave place to a positive idea, she saw — as
she had so often seen them - her father and her mother, sitting
there warming their feet by the fire. She drew back terrified,
struck her back against the edge of the door, caught at it to
keep herself from falling, but with her eyes still fixed upon the
chairs.
The vision disappeared. She remained forgetful of everything
during some moments; then slowly she recovered her self-pos-
session, and would have fled from the room, fearful of losing her
very senses. By chance, her glance fell against the door-post on
which she chanced to be leaning; and lo! before her eyes were
the marks that had been made to keep track of Poulet's height
as he was growing up!
The little marks climbed the painted wood with unequal in-
tervals; figures traced with the penknife noted down the different
ages and growths during the boy's life. Sometimes the jottings
were in the handwriting of her father, a large hand; sometimes
they were in her own smaller hand; sometimes in that of Aunt
## p. 9815 (#223) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9815
Lison, a little tremulous. It seemed to her that the child of
other days was actually there, standing before her with his blond
hair, pressing his little forehead against the wall so that his
height could be measured; and the Baron was crying, “Why,
Jeanne! he has grown a whole centimetre since six weeks ago! '
She kissed the piece of wood in a frenzy of love and desolate-
ness.
But some one was calling her from outside. It was Rosalie's
voice: “Madame Jeanne, Madame Jeanne! We are waiting for
you, to have luncheon. ” She hurried away from the room half
out of her senses. She hardly understood anything that the oth-
ers said to her at luncheon. She ate the things that they put
on her plate; she listened without knowing what she heard, talk-
ing mechanically with the farming-women, who inquired about
her health; she let them embrace her, and herself saluted the
cheeks that were held out to her; and then got into the wagon
again.
When the high roof of the château was lost to her sight
across the trees, she felt in her very heart a direful wrench. It
seemed to her in her innermost spirit that now she had said
farewell forever to her old home!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by
E. Irenæus Stevenson
A NORMANDY OUTING: JEAN ROLAND'S LOVE-MAKING
From Pierre and Jean. Copyright 1890, by Hugh Craig.
Published by
Home Book Company
T"
HE harvest was ripe. Beside the dull green of the clover
and the bright green of the beets, the yellow stalks of
wheat illuminated the plains with a tawny golden gleam.
They seemed to have imbibed the sunlight that fell upon them.
Here and there the reapers were at work; and in the fields
attacked by the scythe the laborers were seen, swinging rhythmi-
cally as they swept the huge, wing-shaped blade over the surface
of the ground.
After a drive of two hours, the break turned to the left,
passed near a windmill in motion,- a gray melancholy wreck,
half rotten and condemned, the last survivor of the old mills, -
## p. 9816 (#224) ###########################################
9816
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
and then entered a pretty court-yard and drew up before a gay
little house, a celebrated inn of the district.
They started out, net on shoulder and basket on back. Ma-
dame Rosémilly was charming in this costume, with an unex-
pected, rustic, fearless style of beauty.
The petticoat borrowed from Alphonsine, coquettishly raised
and held by a few stitches, so as to enable the wearer to run
and leap without fear among the rocks, displayed her ankle and
the lower part of the calf — the firm calf of a woman at once
agile and strong. Her figure was loose, to leave all her move-
ments easy; and she had found, to cover her head, an immense
gardener's hat of yellow straw, with enormous flaps, to which a
sprig of tamarisk, holding one side cocked up, gave the daunt-
less air of a dashing mousquetaire.
Jean, since receiving his legacy, had asked himself every day
whether he should marry her or no. Every time he saw her,
he felt decided to make her his wife; but when he was alone,
he thought that meanwhile there was time to reflect.
She was
now not as rich as he was, for she possessed only twelve thou-
sand francs a year; — but in real-estate farms, and lots in Havre
on the docks, and these might in time be worth a large sum.
Their fortunes, then, were almost equivalent; and the young
widow assuredly pleased him much.
As he saw her walking before him on this day, he thought,
«Well, I must decide. Beyond question, I could not do bet-
ter. ”
They followed the slope of a little valley, descending from the
village to the cliff; and the cliff at the end of this valley looked
down on the sea from a height of nearly three hundred feet.
Framed in by the green coast, sinking away to the left and
right, a spacious triangle of water, silvery blue in the sunlight,
was visible; and a sail, scarcely perceptible, looked like an insect
down below. The sky, filled with radiance, was so blended with
the water that the eye could not distinguish where one ended and
the other began; and the two ladies, who were in front of the
three men, cast on this clear horizon the clear outline of their
compact figures.
Jean, with ardent glance, saw speeding before him the enti-
cing hat of Madame Rosémilly. Every movement urged him to
those decisive resolutions which the timid and the hesitating take
abruptly. The warm air, in which was blended the scent of the
## p. 9817 (#225) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9817
coast, of the reeds, the clover, the grasses, and the marine odor
of the rocks exposed by the tide, animated him with a gentle
intoxication; and he decided, more and more at every step, at
every second, at every look he cast on the graceful outline of
the young woman - he decided to hesitate no longer, to tell her
that he loved her and wanted to marry her. The fishing party
would be of service: it would render a tête-à-tête more easy; and
besides, it would furnish a pretty background, a pretty scene for
words of love, with their feet in a basin of limpid water, as they
watched the long feelers of the shrimps darting through the sea.
weeds.
When they reached the end of the valley at the edge of the
bluff, they perceived a little path that ran down the cliff; and
below them, between the sea and the foot of the precipice, about
half-way down, a wondrous chaos of enormous rocks, that had
fallen or been hurled down, heaped on each other on
a kind
of grassy broken plain which disappeared toward the south, and
which had been formed by ancient landslips. In the long strip
of brushwood and turf, tossed, one might say, by the throes of a
volcano, the fallen rocks resembled the ruins of a great vanished
city that once on a time had looked down on the ocean, itself
dominated by the white and endless wall of the cliff.
“How beautiful! ” said Madame Rosémilly, pausing.
Jean joined her, and with beating heart offered his hand to
guide her down the narrow steps cut in the rock.
They went on in front; while Beausire, stiffening himself on
his short legs, held out his bent arm to Madame Roland, who
was dazed by the blank depth.
Roland and Pierre came last; and the doctor had to support
his father, who was so troubled by vertigo that he sat down, and
thus slid from step to step.
The young people, who descended at the head of the party,
went rapidly, and suddenly caught sight of a streamlet of pure
water springing from a little hole in the cliff, by the side of a
wooden bench, which formed a resting-place about the middle of
the slope. The streamlet at first spread into a basin about the
size of a wash-hand bowl, which it had excavated for itself; and
then, falling in a cascade of about two feet in height, flowed
across the path where a carpet of cress had grown, and then
disappeared in the reeds and grass, across the level where the
landslips were heaped up.
"How thirsty I am! ” cried Madame Rosémilly.
## p. 9818 (#226) ###########################################
9818
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
)
But how to drink? She tried to collect in the hollow of her
hand the water which escaped between her fingers. Jean had a
bright idea; he placed a stone in the road, and she knelt on it to
drink from the very source with her lips, which were thus raised
to the same height.
When she raised her head, covered with glittering drops
sprinkled by thousands over her face, her hair, her eyelashes, her
bust, - Jean, bending toward her, whispered:-
“How pretty you are! ”
She replied in the tone one assumes to scold a child:
“Will you hold your tongue ? ”
These were the first words of flirtation which they had ex-
changed.
“Come,” said Jean, rather discomfited, “let us be off before
they overtake us. "
In fact, he was aware that Captain Beausire was quite close
to them, and was descending backwards in order to support
Madame Roland with both hands; while, higher up and farther
away, M. Roland, in a sitting posture, was dragging himself down
by his feet and elbows with the speed of a tortoise, and Pierre
went before him to superintend his movements.
The path became less steep, and formed now a sloping road
that skirted the enormous blocks that had fallen from above.
Madame Rosémilly and Jean began to run, and were soon on the
shingle. They crossed it to gain the rocks, which extended in a
long and flat surface covered with seaweed, in which innumerable
flashes of water glittered. The tide was low and far out, behind
this slimy plain of sea-wrack with its shining green and black
growths.
Jean rolled up his trousers to the knee and his sleeves to the
elbow, so as to wet himself with impunity, and cried “Forward! ”
as he boldly leaped into the first pool that presented itself.
With more prudence, though with equal determination to wade
into the water at once, the young woman went around the narrow
basin with timid steps,- for she slipped on the slimy weeds.
"Do you see anything ? ” she said.
“Yes, I see your face reflected in the water.
“If you only see that, you will not have any fishing to boast
of. ”
He said in a tender voice:
"Ah, that is fishing I shall prefer over all!
She laughed.
»
»
## p. 9819 (#227) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9819
((
« Try, then, and you'll see how it slips through your net. ”
Well, if you like — »
“I should like to see you catch some prawns — and nothing
more — just at present. ”
“You are cruel. Let us go farther: there is nothing here. ”
He offered her his hand to steady her on the greasy rocks.
She leaned on it rather timidly; and he, all at once, felt himself
invaded by love, throbbing with desire, hungering for her, as if
the passion that was germinating in him had waited for that day
to burst forth.
They soon arrived at a deeper crevice, where, beneath the
rippling water flowing to the distant sea by an invisible fissure,
long, fine, strangely colored seaweeds, with tresses of rose and
green, floated as if they were swimming.
Madame Rosémilly exclaimed:-
“Look, look, I see one — a big one, a very big one, down
there! »
He perceived it in turn, and went down into the crevice,
although the water wet him to the waist.
But the creature, moving its long feelers, quietly retired be-
fore the net. Jean drove it toward the wreck, sure of catching
it there. When it found itself blockaded, it made a sudden dash
over the net, crossed the pool, and disappeared.
The young woman, who was watching in panting eagerness
his attempt, could not refrain from crying: -
"Ah, clumsy!
He was vexed, and without thinking, dragged his net through
a pool full of weeds. As he raised it to the surface, he saw in it
three large transparent prawns, which had been blindly dragged
from their invisible hiding-place.
He presented them in triumph to Madame Rosémilly, who
dared not touch them for fear of the sharp, tooth-like point which
arms their heads. At last she decided to take them; and seiz-
ing between two of her fingers the thin end of their beard, she
placed them one after the other in her basket, with some weed
to keep them alive.
Then, on finding a shallower piece of water, she entered it
with hesitating steps, and catching her breath as the cold struck
her feet, began to fish herself. She was skillful and cunning,
with a supple wrist and a sportman's instinct. At about every
cast she brought out some victims, deceived and surprised by
the ingenious slowness with which she swept the pool.
»
## p. 9820 (#228) ###########################################
9820
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
»
Jean was taking nothing; but he followed her step by step,
touched her dress, bent over her, pretended to be in despair at
his awkwardness, and wished her to teach him.
«Show me how," he said; « show me! ”
Then, as their two faces were reflected one beside the other
in the clear water, which the deep-growing seaweeds formed into
a limpid mirror, Jean smiled at the face so near his which looked
up to him from below; and at times threw to it, from the tips
of his fingers, a kiss which seemed to fall on it.
“You are very tiresome,” the young woman said. “My dear
fellow, never do two things at the same time. ”
He replied:-
“I am only doing one. I love you. "
She drew herself up erect, and said in a serious tone:
Come
now, what is the matter with you for the last ten
minutes? Have you lost your head ? »
“No, I have not lost my head. I love you, and at last dare
to tell you so. "
They were now standing in the pool of sea-water that rose
nearly to their knees, and with their dripping hands leaning on
their nets, looked into the depth of each other's eyes.
She resumed in a playful and rather annoyed tone: -
“You are badly advised to speak to me thus at this moment.
Could you not wait another day, and not spoil my fishing ? ”
He replied:-
“Pardon me, but I could not keep silence. I have loved you
a long time. To-day you have made me lose my senses. ”
Then she seemed at once to take her resolution, and to resign
herself to talk business and renounce amusement.
"Let us sit on this rock," she said: “we shall be able to talk
quietly. ”
They climbed on a rock a little higher; and when they were
settled, side by side, their feet hanging down in the full sunshine,
she rejoined:-
My friend, you are not a child, and I am not a girl. Both
of us know what we are about, and can weigh all the conse-
quences of our acts. If you decide to-day to declare your love
to me, I suppose naturally you wish to marry me. ”
He had scarcely expected such a clear statement of the situa-
tion, and answered sheepishly: –
“Why, yes! ”
“ Have you spoken to your father and mother ? »
(
»
## p. 9821 (#229) ###########################################
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9821
“No. I wished to know if you would accept me. ”
She extended to him her hand, which was still wet, and as he
placed his own in it with fervor -
"I am willing,” she said. “I believe you good and loyal.
But do not forget that I would not displease your parents. ”
"Do you think that my mother has foreseen nothing, and that
she would love you as she does if she did not desire a marriage
between us ? »
" True: I am rather confused. "
They were silent. On his part, he was astonished that she
was so little confused and so reasonable. He had expected some
pretty airs and graces, refusals which say yes, a whole coquettish
comedy of love blended with fishing and the splashing of water.
And it was all over; he felt himself bound and married in a
score of words. They had nothing more to say to each other,
since they were in full accord; and they both now remained
somewhat embarrassed at what had passed so rapidly between
them, perhaps even somewhat confused, - not daring to speak
further, not daring to fish further, not knowing what to do.
Translation of Hugh Craig.
THE PIECE OF STRING
From «The Odd Number. Copyright 1889, by Harper & Brothers
I'
T WAS market day, and over all the roads round Goderville the
peasants and their wives were coming towards the town. The
men walked easily, lurching the whole body forward at every
step. Their long legs were twisted and deformed by the slow,
painful labors of the country: by bending over to plow, which
is what also makes their left shoulders too high and their figures
crooked; and by reaping corn, which obliges them for steadiness'
sake to spread their knees too wide. Their starched blue blouses,
shining as though varnished, ornamented at collar and cuffs with
little patterns of white stitch-work, and blown up big around
their bony bodies, seemed exactly like balloons about to soar, but
putting forth a head, two arms, and two feet.
Some of these fellows dragged a cow or a calf at the end
of a rope. And just behind the animal, beating it over the
back with a leaf-covered branch to hasten its pace, went their
wives, carrying large baskets from which came forth the heads
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
of chickens or of ducks. These women walked with steps far
shorter and quicker than the men; their figures, withered and
upright, were adorned with scanty little shawls pinned over their
flat bosoms; and they enveloped their heads each in a white
cloth, close fastened round the hair and surmounted by a cap.
Now a char-à-banc passed by, drawn by a jerky-paced nag. It
shook up strangely the two men on the seat. And the woman
at the bottom of the cart held fast to its sides to lessen the hard
joltings.
In the market place at Goderville was a great crowd, a min-
gled multitude of men and beasts. The horns of the cattle, the
high and long-napped hats of wealthy peasants, the head-dresses
of the women, came to the surface of that sea. And voices
clamorous, sharp, shrill, made a continuous and savage din. Above
it a huge burst of laughter from the sturdy lungs of a merry
yokel would sometimes sound, and sometimes a long bellow from
a cow tied fast to the wall of a house.
It all smelled of the stable, of milk, of hay, and of perspira-
tion; giving off that half human, half animal odor which is pecul-
iar to the men of the fields.
Maître Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, had just arrived at Goder.
ville, and was taking his way towards the square, when he
perceived on the ground a little piece of string. Maître Hauche-
corne, economical like all true Normans, reflected that everything
was worth picking up which could be of any use; and he stooped
down — but painfully, because he suffered with rheumatism. He
took the bit of thin cord from the ground, and was carefully pre-
paring to roll it up when he saw Maître Malandain the harness-
maker on his doorstep, looking at him. They had once had a
quarrel about a halter, and they had remained angry, bearing
malice on both sides. Maître Hauchecorne was overcome with a
sort of shame at being seen by his enemy looking in the dirt so
for a bit of string. He quickly hid his find beneath his blouse;
then in the pocket of his breeches; then pretended to be still
looking for something on the ground which he did not discover;
and at last went off towards the market-place, with his head bent
forward, and a body almost doubled in two by rheumatic pains.
He lost himself immediately in the crowd, which was clamor-
ous, slow, and agitated by interminable bargains. The peasants
examined the cows, went off, came back, always in great per-
plexity and fear of being cheated, never quite daring to decide,
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
9823
spying at the eye of the seller, trying ceaselessly to discover the
tricks of the man and the defect in the beast.
The women, having placed their great baskets at their feet,
had pulled out the poultry, which lay upon the ground, tied by
the legs, with eyes scared, with combs scarlet.
They listened to propositions, maintaining their prices, with a
dry manner, with an impassive face; or suddenly, perhaps, decid-
ing to take the lower price which was offered, they cried out to
the customer, who was departing slowly:-
“All right: I'll let you have them, Maît' Anthime. ”
Then, little by little, the square became empty; and when
the Angelus struck midday, those who lived at a distance poured
into the inns.
At Jourdain's, the great room was filled with eaters, just as
the vast court was filled with vehicles of every sort, — wagons,
gigs, char-à-bancs, tilburies, tilt-carts which have no name, yel-
low with mud, misshapen, pieced together, raising their shafts to
heaven like two arms, or it may be with their nose in the dirt
and their rear in the air,
Just opposite to where the diners were at table, the huge
fireplace, full of clear flame, threw a lively heat on the backs of
those who sat along the right. Three spits were turning, loaded
with chickens, with pigeons, and with joints of mutton; and a
delectable odor of roast meat, and of gravy gushing over crisp
brown skin, took wing from the hearth, kindled merriment, caused
mouths to water.
All the aristocracy of the plow were eating there, at Maît'
Jourdain's, the innkeeper's,-a dealer in horses also, and a sharp
fellow who had made a pretty penny in his day.
The dishes were passed round, were emptied, with jugs of
yellow cider. Every one told of his affairs, of his purchases and
his sales. They asked news about the crops.
The weather was
good for green stuffs, but a little wet for wheat.
All of a sudden the drum rolled in the court before the house.
Every one, except some of the most indifferent, was on his feet
at once and ran to the door, to the windows, with his mouth still
full, and his napkin in his hand.
When the public crier had finished his tattoo, he called forth
in a jerky voice, making his pauses out of time:-
“Be it known to the inhabitants of Goderville, and in general
to all
-persons present at the market, that there has been lost
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
this morning, on the Beuzeville road, between – nine and ten
o'clock, a pocket-book of black leather, containing five hundred
francs and business papers. You are requested to return it— to
the mayor's office at once, or to Maître Fortuné Houlbrèque of
Manneville. There will be fifty francs reward. ”
Then the man departed. They heard once more at a distance
the dull beatings on the drum, and the faint voice of the crier.
Then they began to talk of this event, reckoning up the
chances which Maître Houlbrèque had of finding or of not find-
ing his pocket-book again.
And the meal went on.
They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gen-
darmes appeared on the threshold.
He asked:-
"Is Maître Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, here? ”
Maître Hauchecorne, seated at the other end of the table,
answered:-
«Here I am. ”
And the corporal resumed:-
“Maître Hauchecorne, will you have the kindness to come with
me to the mayor's office ? M. le Maire would like to speak to
you. ”
The peasant, surprised and uneasy, gulped down his little glass
of cognac, got up, and — even worse bent over than in the morn-
ing, since the first steps after a rest were always particularly dif-
ficult — started off, repeating :
“Here I am, here I am. ”
And he followed the corporal.
The mayor was waiting for him, seated in an arm-chair. He
was the notary of the place, a tall, grave man of pompous speech.
"Maître Hauchecorne," said he, “this morning, on the Beuze-
ville road, you were seen to pick up the pocket-book lost by
Maître Houlbrèque of Manneville. ”
The countryman, speechless, gazed at the mayor; frightened
already by this suspicion, which rested on him he knew not why.
“I-I picked up that pocket-book ? »
“Yes, you. ”
"I swear I didn't even know nothing about it at all. ”
« You were seen. ”
They saw me – me? Who is that who saw me?
"M. Malandain, the harness-maker. ”
>
(
ac
>
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GUY DE MAUPASSANT
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Then the old man remembered, understood, and reddening
with anger:
:-
"Ah! he saw me, did he, the rascal ? He saw me picking up
this string here, M'sieu' le Maire. »
And fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out of
it the little end of string.
But the mayor incredulously shook his head :-
«You will not make me believe, Maître Hauchecorne, that
M. Malandain, who is a man worthy of credit, has mistaken this
string for a pocket-book. ”
The peasant, furious, raised his hand and spit as if to attest
his good faith, repeating: -
For all that, it is the truth of the good God, the blessed
truth, M'sieu' le Maire. There! on my soul and my salvation I
repeat it. ”
The mayor continued:
"After picking up the thing in question, you even looked
for some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not
dropped out of it. ”
The good man was suffocated with indignation and with fear.
“If they can say —! If they can say such lies as that to slan-
der an honest man! If they can say — !
