Une Vie, a Piece of String and Other Stories

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GUY DE MAUPASSANT

UNE VIE

A Piece of String

And Other Stories

Translated by
Albert M. C. McMaster, B.A.
A. E. Henderson, B.A.
Mme. Quesada and Others

VOLUME I.

[Illustration: "Jeanne"]

CONTENTS

  • Introduction by Pol. Neveux
  • Une Vie (The History of a Heart)
    1. The Home by the Sea
    2. Happy Days
    3. M. de Lamare
    4. Marriage and Disillusion
    5. Corsica and a New Life
    6. Disenchantment
    7. Jeanne's Discovery
    8. Maternity
    9. Death of La Baronne
    10. Retribution
    11. The Development of Paul
    12. A New Home
    13. Jeanne in Paris
    14. Light at Eventide
  • A Vagabond
  • The Fishing Hole
  • The Spasm
  • In The Wood
  • Martine
  • All Over
  • The Parrot
  • A Piece Of String

    • [Illustration: Guy de Maupassant]

    GUY DE MAUPASSANT

    A Study by Pol. Neveux

    "I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a
    thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to José Maria de Heredia on
    the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid
    solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which,
    for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the
    fertility of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and
    travels, only to sink prematurely into the abyss of madness and
    death....

    In the month of April, 1880, an article appeared in the "Le Gaulois"
    announcing the publication of the Soirées de Médan. It was signed by a
    name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe
    against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature,
    the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the
    publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the
    quiet of evening, on an island in the Seine, beneath poplars instead
    of the Neapolitan cypresses dear to the friends of Boccaccio, amid the
    continuous murmur of the valley, and no longer to the sound of the
    Pyrennean streams that murmured a faint accompaniment to the tales of
    Marguerite's cavaliers, the master and his disciples took turns in
    narrating some striking or pathetic episode of the war. And the issue,
    in collaboration, of these tales in one volume, in which the master
    jostled elbows with his pupils, took on the appearance of a manifesto,
    the tone of a challenge, or the utterance of a creed.

    In fact, however, the beginnings had been much more simple, and they
    had confined themselves, beneath the trees of Médan, to deciding on a
    general title for the work. Zola had contributed the manuscript of the
    "Attaque du Moulin," and it was at Maupassant's house that the five
    young men gave in their contributions. Each one read his story,
    Maupassant being the last. When he had finished Boule de Suif, with a
    spontaneous impulse, with an emotion they never forgot, filled with
    enthusiasm at this revelation, they all rose and, without superfluous
    words, acclaimed him as a master.

    He undertook to write the article for the Gaulois and, in coöperation
    with his friends, he worded it in the terms with which we are
    familiar, amplifying and embellishing it, yielding to an inborn taste
    for mystification which his youth rendered excusable. The essential
    point, he said, is to "unmoor" criticism.

    It was unmoored. The following day Wolff wrote a polemical
    dissertation in the Figaro and carried away his colleagues. The volume
    was a brilliant success, thanks to Boule de Suif. Despite the novelty,
    the honesty of effort, on the part of all, no mention was made of the
    other stories. Relegated to the second rank, they passed without
    notice. From his first battle, Maupassant was master of the field in
    literature.

    At once the entire press took him up and said what was appropriate
    regarding the budding celebrity. Biographers and reporters sought
    information concerning his life. As it was very simple and perfectly
    straightforward, they resorted to invention.