7817 HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT. MAUPASSANT, HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE, a French novelist; born at Miromesnil, Seine Inférieure, France, August 5, 1850; died at Paris, July 6, 1893. His first publication was a short story, "Boule-de-Suif." This was followed by a play, "Histoire du Vieux Temps," and a volume of naturalistic verse, "Des Vers," all in 1880. Then came in rapid succession volume after volume, more than twenty in all, for the next ten or twelve years. But in 1892, his mind gave way, and for months before his death he was confined in a private insane asylum. Among his best works are "La Maison Tellier" (1881); "Mademoiselle Fifi" (1882); "Les Sœurs Rondoli" (1884); "Contes du jour et de la nuit" (1885); "Monsieur Parent" (1885); "Bel-Ami" (1885); "La Petite Roque " (1886); "Le Horla" (1887); "Mont-Oriol" (1887); "Pierre et Jean" (1888); "La Main Gauche" (1889); "Fort comme la mort" (1889); "L'Inutile Beauté" (1890); and "Notre Cœur" (1890). Maupassant belonged to the naturalistic school of writers. THE LAST YEARS OF MADAME JEANNE. (From "A Life.") JEANNE did not go out any more. She hardly bestirred her self. Each morning she got up at the same hour; took notice of the weather outside; and then went down and seated herself before the fire in the hall. She would remain there whole days, immovable, her eyes fixed upon the flame, giving course to lamentable thoughts, following 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 supper." 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 any thing 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 sometimes 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 fingers 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 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 was 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 tenaciously 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 appearance 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 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 become 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 downstairs. 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 VOL. XIV. — 34 |