The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories

by Guy de Maupassant

  He looked at her, not knowing what to say, what to do. She began to cry out again:

  “Oh, oh, it is killing me. Oh, Benoist!”

  She writhed frightfully.

  Benoist was suddenly seized with a frantic longing to help her, to quiet her, to remove her pain. He leaned over, lifted her up and laid her on her bed; and while she kept on moaning he began to take off her clothes, her jacket, her skirt and her petticoat. She bit her fists to keep from crying out. Then he did as he was accustomed to doing for cows, ewes, and mares: he assisted in delivering her and found in his hands a large infant who was moaning.

  He wiped it off and wrapped it up in a towel that was drying in front of the fire, and laid it on a bundle of clothes ready for ironing that was on the table. Then he went back to the mother.

  He took her up and placed her on the floor again, then he changed the bedclothes and put her back into bed. She faltered:

  “Thank you, Benoist, you have a noble heart.” And then she wept a little as if she felt regretful.

  He did not love her any longer, not the least bit. It was all over. Why? How? He could not have said. What had happened had cured him better than ten years of absence.

  She asked, exhausted and trembling:

  “What is it?”

  He replied calmly:

  “It is a very fine girl.”

  Then they were silent again. At the end of a few moments, the mother, in a weak voice, said:

  “Show her to me, Benoist.”

  He took up the little one and was showing it to her as if he were holding the consecrated wafer, when the door opened, and Isidore Vallin appeared.

  He did not understand at first, then all at once he guessed.

  Benoist, in consternation, stammered out:

  “I was passing, I was just passing by when f heard her crying out, and I came—there is your child, Vallin!”

  Then the husband, his eyes full of tears, stepped forward, took the little mite of humanity that he held out to him, kissed it, unable to speak from emotion for a few seconds; then placing the child on the bed, he held out both hands to Benoist, saying:

  “Your hand upon it, Benoist. From now on we understand each other. If you are willing, we will be a pair of friends, a pair of friends!” And Benoist replied: “Indeed I will, certainly, indeed I will.”

  ALL OVER

  Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room and smiled.

  He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a “chic,” in short, that indescribable something which establishes a greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He murmured:

  “Lormerin is still alive!”

  And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.

  On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the envelopes.

  It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?

  This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple, nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at it uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: “From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can’t identify it.”

  He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without making up his mind to open it.

  Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. “Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it’s only somebody asking for money.”

  And he tore open the letter. Then he read:

  MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call “my hospital.” Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an event.

  You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine with her this evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, although happy, reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.

  LISE DE VANCE.

  Lormerin’s heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a poignant emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!

  If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he called “Ashflower,” on account of the strange color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a dainty, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.

  Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved. She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.

  A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air—the odor of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon’s rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.

  “I don’t know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see poetic things I have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry.”

  He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming—the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:

  “My little Lise, you are exquisite.”

  What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and never let any one see her afterward.

  Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.

  He rose, and said aloud: “Certainly, I will go and dine with her this evening!”

  And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: “Sh
e must look very old, older than I look.” And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!

  He turned his attention to the other letters. They were of no importance.

  The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other days. What was she like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years! But would he recognize her?

  He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch With the curling iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see her.

  The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when he was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.

  He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly, and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both hands toward him.

  He seized them, kissed them one after the other several times; then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.

  Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.

  He could not abstain from murmuring:

  “Is it you, Lise?”

  She replied:

  “Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, would you? I have had so much sorrow—so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my life. Look at me now—or, rather, don’t look at me! But how handsome you have kept—and young! If I had by chance met you in the street I would have exclaimed: ‘Jaquelet!’. Now, sit down and let us, first of all, have a chat. And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You’ll see how she resembles me—or, rather, how I resembled her—no, it is not quite that; she is just like the ‘me’ of former days—you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend.”

  He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to say; he did not know this woman—it seemed to him that he had never seen her before. Why had he come to this house? What could he talk about? Of the long ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? That woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young girl who used to call him “Jaquelet” so prettily?

  They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled, profoundly ill at ease.

  As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and spasmodically and slowly, she rose and pressed the button of the bell.

  “I am going to call Renee,” she said.

  There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; then a young voice exclaimed:

  “Here I am, mamma!”

  Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an apparition.

  He stammered:

  “Good-day, mademoiselle”

  Then, turning toward the mother:

  “Oh! it is you!”

  In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty-five years before. This one was even younger, fresher, more childlike.

  He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again, murmuring in her ear:

  “Good-morning, Lison!”

  A man-servant announced:

  “Dinner is ready, madame.”

  And they proceeded toward the dining-room.

  What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:

  “Which is the real one?”

  The mother smiled again repeating over and over:

  “Do you remember?” And it was in the bright eyes of the young girl that he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: “Do you remember, Lison?” forgetting this white-haired lady who was looking at him tenderly.

  And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of today was not exactly the woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in her glances, in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again what had escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not possess.

  The baronne said:

  “You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend.”

  He murmured:

  “There are many other things that I have lost!”

  But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.

  The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar intonation, some expression of her mother’s, a certain style of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.

  He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one, the old one come back out of the past, and he loved her as he had loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval of twenty-five years.

  He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think what he should do.

  But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.

  And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his lamentable image, murmuring:

  “All over, Lormerin!”

  THE PARROT

  I

  Everybody in Fecamp knew Mother Patin’s story. She had certainly been unfortunate with her husband, for in his lifetime he used to beat her, just as wheat is threshed in the barn.

  He was master of a fishing bark and had married her, formerly, because she was pretty, although poor.

  Patin was a good sailor, but brutal. He used to frequent Father Auban’s inn, where he would usually drink four or five glasses of brandy, on lucky days eight or ten glasses and even more, according to his mood. The brandy was served to the customers by Father Auban’s daughter, a pleasing brunette, who attracted people to the house only by her pretty face, for nothing had ever been gossiped about her.

  Patin, when he entered the inn, would be satisfied to look at her and to compliment her politely and respectfully. After he had had his first glass of brandy he would already find her much nicer; at the second he would wink; at the third he would say. “If you were only willing, Mam’zelle Desiree—” without ever finishing his sentence; at the fourth he would try to hold her back by her skirt in order to kiss her; and when he went as high as ten it was Father Auban who brought him the remaining drinks.

  The old innke
eper, who knew all the tricks of the trade, made Desiree walk about between the tables in order to increase the consumption of drinks; and Desiree, who was a worthy daughter of Father Auban, flitted around among the benches and joked with them, her lips smiling and her eyes sparkling.

  Patin got so well accustomed to Desiree’s face that he thought of it even while at sea, when throwing out his nets, in storms or in calms, on moonlit or dark evenings. He thought of her while holding the tiller in the stern of his boat, while his four companions were slumbering with their heads on their arms. He always saw her, smiling, pouring out the yellow brandy with a peculiar shoulder movement and then exclaiming as she turned away: “There, now; are you satisfied?”

  He saw her so much in his mind’s eye that he was overcome by an irresistible desire to marry her, and, not being able to hold out any longer, he asked for her hand.

  He was rich, owned his own vessel, his nets and a little house at the foot of the hill on the Retenue, whereas Father Auban had nothing. The marriage was therefore eagerly agreed upon and the wedding took place as soon as possible, as both parties were desirous for the affair to be concluded as early as convenient.

  Three days after the wedding Patin could no longer understand how he had ever imagined Desiree to be different from other women. What a fool he had been to encumber himself with a penniless creature, who had undoubtedly inveigled him with some drug which she had put in his brandy!

  He would curse all day lung, break his pipe with his teeth and maul his crew. After he had sworn by every known term at everything that came his way he would rid himself of his remaining anger on the fish and lobsters, which he pulled from the nets and threw into the baskets amid oaths and foul language. When he returned home he would find his wife, Father Auban’s daughter, within reach of his mouth and hand, and it was not long before he treated her like the lowest creature in the world. As she listened calmly, accustomed to paternal violence, he grew exasperated at her quiet, and one evening he beat her. Then life at his home became unbearable.