Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete

G >> Guy de Maupassant >> Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete


And he spoke to me about the philosopher and told me about the almost
supernatural impression which this strange being made on all who came
near him.

He gave me an account of the interview of the old iconoclast with a
French politician, a doctrinaire Republican, who wanted to get a glimpse
of this man, and found him in a noisy tavern, seated in the midst of his
disciples, dry, wrinkled, laughing with an unforgettable laugh, attacking
and tearing to pieces ideas and beliefs with a single word, as a dog
tears with one bite of his teeth the tissues with which he plays.

He repeated for me the comment of this Frenchman as he went away,
astonished and terrified: "I thought I had spent an hour with the devil."

Then he added:

"He had, indeed, monsieur, a frightful smile, which terrified us even
after his death. I can tell you an anecdote about it that is not
generally known, if it would interest you."

And he began, in a languid voice, interrupted by frequent fits of
coughing.

"Schopenhauer had just died, and it was arranged that we should watch, in
turn, two by two, till morning.

"He was lying in a large apartment, very simple, vast and gloomy. Two wax
candles were burning on the stand by the bedside.

"It was midnight when I went on watch, together with one of our comrades.
The two friends whom we replaced had left the apartment, and we came and
sat down at the foot of the bed.

"The face was not changed. It was laughing. That pucker which we knew so
well lingered still around the corners of the lips, and it seemed to us
that he was about to open his eyes, to move and to speak. His thought, or
rather his thoughts, enveloped us. We felt ourselves more than ever in
the atmosphere of his genius, absorbed, possessed by him. His domination
seemed to be even more sovereign now that he was dead. A feeling of
mystery was blended with the power of this incomparable spirit.

"The bodies of these men disappear, but they themselves remain; and in
the night which follows the cessation of their heart's pulsation I assure
you, monsieur, they are terrifying.

"And in hushed tones we talked about him, recalling to mind certain
sayings, certain formulas of his, those startling maxims which are like
jets of flame flung, in a few words, into the darkness of the Unknown
Life.

"'It seems to me that he is going to speak,' said my comrade. And we
stared with uneasiness bordering on fear at the motionless face, with its
eternal laugh. Gradually, we began to feel ill at ease, oppressed, on the
point of fainting. I faltered:

"'I don't know what is the matter with me, but, I assure you I am not
well.'

"And at that moment we noticed that there was an unpleasant odor from the
corpse.

"Then, my comrade suggested that we should go into the adjoining room,
and leave the door open; and I assented to his proposal.

"I took one of the wax candles which burned on the stand, and I left the
second behind. Then we went and sat down at the other end of the
adjoining apartment, in such a position that we could see the bed and the
corpse, clearly revealed by the light.

"But he still held possession of us. One would have said that his
immaterial essence, liberated, free, all-powerful and dominating, was
flitting around us. And sometimes, too, the dreadful odor of the
decomposed body came toward us and penetrated us, sickening and
indefinable.

"Suddenly a shiver passed through our bones: a sound, a slight sound,
came from the death-chamber. Immediately we fixed our glances on him, and
we saw, yes, monsieur, we saw distinctly, both of us, something white
pass across the bed, fall on the carpet, and vanish under an armchair.

"We were on our feet before we had time to think of anything, distracted
by stupefying terror, ready to run away. Then we stared at each other. We
were horribly pale. Our hearts throbbed fiercely enough to have raised
the clothing on our chests. I was the first to speak:

"'Did you see?'

"'Yes, I saw.'

"'Can it be that he is not dead?'

"'Why, when the body is putrefying?'

"'What are we to do?'

"My companion said in a hesitating tone:

"'We must go and look.'

"I took our wax candle and entered first, glancing into all the dark
corners in the large apartment. Nothing was moving now, and I approached
the bed. But I stood transfixed with stupor and fright:

"Schopenhauer was no longer laughing! He was grinning in a horrible
fashion, with his lips pressed together and deep hollows in his cheeks. I
stammered out:

"'He is not dead!'

"But the terrible odor ascended to my nose and stifled me. And I no
longer moved, but kept staring fixedly at him, terrified as if in the
presence of an apparition.

"Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his glance,
and saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the bed,
standing out white on the dark carpet, and open as if to bite,
Schopenhauer's set of artificial teeth.

"The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out of
the mouth.

"I was really frightened that day, monsieur."

And as the sun was sinking toward the glittering sea, the consumptive
German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the
hotel.






ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, Vol. 3.


GUY DE MAUPASSANT
ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES
Translated by
ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others





VOLUME III.




MISS HARRIET

There were seven of us on a drag, four women and three men; one of the
latter sat on the box seat beside the coachman. We were ascending, at a
snail's pace, the winding road up the steep cliff along the coast.

Setting out from Etretat at break of day in order to visit the ruins of
Tancarville, we were still half asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the
morning. The women especially, who were little accustomed to these early
excursions, half opened and closed their eyes every moment, nodding their
heads or yawning, quite insensible to the beauties of the dawn.

It was autumn. On both sides of the road stretched the bare fields,
yellowed by the stubble of wheat and oats which covered the soil like a
beard that had been badly shaved. The moist earth seemed to steam. Larks
were singing high up in the air, while other birds piped in the bushes.

The sun rose at length in front of us, bright red on the plane of the
horizon, and in proportion as it ascended, growing clearer from minute to
minute, the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself like a
young girl leaving her bed in her white robe of vapor. The Comte
d'Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:

"Look! look! a hare!" and he extended his arm toward the left, pointing
to a patch of clover. The animal scurried along, almost hidden by the
clover, only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across a furrow,
stopped, started off again at full speed, changed its course, stopped
anew, uneasy, spying out every danger, uncertain what route to take, when
suddenly it began to run with great bounds, disappearing finally in a
large patch of beet-root. All the men had waked up to watch the course of
the animal.

Rene Lamanoir exclaimed:

"We are not at all gallant this morning," and; regarding his neighbor,
the little Baroness de Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to
her in a low tone: "You are thinking of your husband, baroness. Reassure
yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you have still four
days."

She answered with a sleepy smile:

"How stupid you are!" Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let
somebody say something to make us laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have
the reputation of having had more love affairs than the Due de Richelieu,
tell us a love story in which you have played a part; anything you like."

Leon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very
strong, very proud of his physique and very popular with women, took his
long white beard in his hand and smiled. Then, after a few moments'
reflection, he suddenly became serious.

"Ladies, it will not be an amusing tale, for I am going to relate to you
the saddest love affair of my life, and I sincerely hope that none of my
friends may ever pass through a similar experience.

"I was twenty-five years of age and was pillaging along the coast of
Normandy. I call 'pillaging' wandering about, with a knapsack on one's
back, from inn to inn, under the pretext of making studies and sketching
landscapes. I knew nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky
wandering life, in which one is perfectly free, without shackles of any
kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thinking even of the
morrow. One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide save his
fancy, without any counsellor save his eyes. One stops because a running
brook attracts one, because the smell of potatoes frying tickles one's
olfactories on passing an inn. Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis
which decides one in his choice or the roguish glance of the servant at
an inn. Do not despise me for my affection for these rustics. These girls
have a soul as well as senses, not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips;
while their hearty and willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love
is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach,
an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so
precious that they must never be despised.

"I have had rendezvous in ditches full of primroses, behind the cow
stable and in barns among the straw, still warm from the heat of the day.
I have recollections of coarse gray cloth covering supple peasant skin
and regrets for simple, frank kisses, more delicate in their unaffected
sincerity than the subtle favors of charming and distinguished women.

"But what one loves most amid all these varied adventures is the country,
the woods, the rising of the sun, the twilight, the moonlight. These are,
for the painter, honeymoon trips with Nature. One is alone with her in
that long and quiet association. You go to sleep in the fields, amid
marguerites and poppies, and when you open your eyes in the full glare of
the sunlight you descry in the distance the little village with its
pointed clock tower which sounds the hour of noon.

"You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out at the foot of an
oak, amid a growth of tall, slender weeds, glistening with life. You go
down on your knees, bend forward and drink that cold, pellucid water
which wets your mustache and nose; you drink it with a physical pleasure,
as though you kissed the spring, lip to lip. Sometimes, when you find a
deep hole along the course of these tiny brooks, you plunge in quite
naked, and you feel on your skin, from head to foot, as it were, an icy
and delicious caress, the light and gentle quivering of the stream.

"You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the edge of ponds, inspired when
the sun is setting in an ocean of blood-red clouds and casts red
reflections or the river. And at night, under the moon, which passes
across the vault of heaven, you think of a thousand strange things which
would never have occurred to your mind under the brilliant light of day.

"So, in wandering through the same country where we, are this year, I
came to the little village of Benouville, on the cliff between Yport and
Etretat. I came from Fecamp, following the coast, a high coast as
straight as a wall, with its projecting chalk cliffs descending
perpendicularly into the sea. I had walked since early morning on the
short grass, smooth and yielding as a carpet, that grows on the edge of
the cliff. And, singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking
sometimes at the slow circling flight of a gull with its white curved
wings outlined on the blue sky, sometimes at the brown sails of a fishing
bark on the green sea. In short, I had passed a happy day, a day of
liberty and of freedom from care.

"A little farmhouse where travellers were lodged was pointed out to me, a
kind of inn, kept by a peasant woman, which stood in the centre of a
Norman courtyard surrounded by a double row of beeches.

"Leaving the coast, I reached the hamlet, which was hemmed in by great
trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.

"She was an old, wrinkled and stern peasant woman, who seemed always to
receive customers under protest, with a kind of defiance.

"It was the month of May. The spreading apple trees covered the court
with a shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon people and
upon the grass.

"I said: 'Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?'

"Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:

"'That depends; everything is let, but all the same I can find out."

"In five minutes we had come to an agreement, and I deposited my bag upon
the earthen floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a
table and a washbowl. The room looked into the large, smoky kitchen,
where the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm and the
landlady, who was a widow.

"I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman was making a
chicken fricassee for dinner in the large fireplace in which hung the
iron pot, black with smoke.

"'You have travellers, then, at the present time?' said I to her.

"She answered in an offended tone of voice:

"'I have a lady, an English lady, who has reached years of maturity. She
occupies the other room.'

"I obtained, by means of an extra five sous a day, the privilege of
dining alone out in the yard when the weather was fine.

"My place was set outside the door, and I was beginning to gnaw the lean
limbs of the Normandy chicken, to drink the clear cider and to munch the
hunk of white bread, which was four days old but excellent.

"Suddenly the wooden gate which gave on the highway was opened, and a
strange lady directed her steps toward the house. She was very thin, very
tall, so tightly enveloped in a red Scotch plaid shawl that one might
have supposed she had no arms, if one had not seen a long hand appear
just above the hips, holding a white tourist umbrella. Her face was like
that of a mummy, surrounded with curls of gray hair, which tossed about
at every step she took and made me think, I know not why, of a pickled
herring in curl papers. Lowering her eyes, she passed quickly in front of
me and entered the house.

"That singular apparition cheered me. She undoubtedly was my neighbor,
the English lady of mature age of whom our hostess had spoken.

"I did not see her again that day. The next day, when I had settled
myself to commence painting at the end of that beautiful valley which you
know and which extends as far as Etretat, I perceived, on lifting my eyes
suddenly, something singular standing on the crest of the cliff, one
might have said a pole decked out with flags. It was she. On seeing me,
she suddenly disappeared. I reentered the house at midday for lunch and
took my seat at the general table, so as to make the acquaintance of this
odd character. But she did not respond to my polite advances, was
insensible even to my little attentions. I poured out water for her
persistently, I passed her the dishes with great eagerness. A slight,
almost imperceptible, movement of the head and an English word, murmured
so low that I did not understand it, were her only acknowledgments.

"I ceased occupying myself with her, although she had disturbed my
thoughts.

"At the end of three days I knew as much about her as did Madame
Lecacheur herself.

"She was called Miss Harriet. Seeking out a secluded village in which to
pass the summer, she had been attracted to Benouville some six months
before and did not seem disposed to leave it. She never spoke at table,
ate rapidly, reading all the while a small book of the Protestant
propaganda. She gave a copy of it to everybody. The cure himself had
received no less than four copies, conveyed by an urchin to whom she had
paid two sous commission. She said sometimes to our hostess abruptly,
without preparing her in the least for the declaration:

"'I love the Saviour more than all. I admire him in all creation; I adore
him in all nature; I carry him always in my heart.'

"And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her tracts
which were destined to convert the universe.

"In, the village she was not liked. In fact, the schoolmaster having
pronounced her an atheist, a kind of stigma attached to her. The cure,
who had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded:

"'She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and I
believe her to be a person of pure morals.'

"These words, 'atheist,' 'heretic,' words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that this
English woman was rich and that she had passed her life in travelling
through every country in the world because her family had cast her off.
Why had her family cast her off? Because of her impiety, of course!

"She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles; one of
those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many; one of
those good and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d'hote of
every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the
charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere
their fantastic manias their manners of petrified vestals, their
indescribable toilets and a certain odor of india-rubber which makes one
believe that at night they are slipped into a rubber casing.

"Whenever I caught sight of one of these individuals in a hotel I fled
like the birds who see a scarecrow in a field.

"This woman, however, appeared so very singular that she did not
displease me.

"Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not rustic,
felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic declarations of
the old maid. She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a term of
contempt that rose to her lips, called forth by I know not what confused
and mysterious mental ratiocination. She said: 'That woman is a
demoniac.' This epithet, applied to that austere and sentimental
creature, seemed to me irresistibly droll. I myself never called her
anything now but 'the demoniac,' experiencing a singular pleasure in
pronouncing aloud this word on perceiving her.

"One day I asked Mother Lecacheur: 'Well, what is our demoniac about
to-day?'

"To which my rustic friend replied with a shocked air:

"'What do you think, sir? She picked up a toad which had had its paw
crushed and carried it to her room and has put it in her washbasin and
bandaged it as if it were a man. If that is not profanation I should like
to know what is!'

"On another occasion, when walking along the shore she bought a large
fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the sea
again. The sailor from whom she had bought it, although she paid him
handsomely, now began to swear, more exasperated, indeed, than if she had
put her hand into his pocket and taken his money. For more than a month
he could not speak of the circumstance without becoming furious and
denouncing it as an outrage. Oh, yes! She was indeed a demoniac, this
Miss Harriet, and Mother Lecacheur must have had an inspiration in thus
christening her.

"The stable boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa
in his youth, entertained other opinions. He said with a roguish air:
'She is an old hag who has seen life.'

"If the poor woman had but known!

"The little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but I
was never able to understand why. Probably her only reason was that she
was a stranger, of another race; of a different tongue and of another
religion. She was, in fact, a demoniac!

"She passed her time wandering about the country, adoring and seeking God
in nature. I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of bushes.
Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed aside the
branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused at having
been found thus, fixing on me terrified eyes like those of an owl
surprised in open day.

"Sometimes, when I was working among the rocks, I would suddenly descry
her on the edge of the cliff like a lighthouse signal. She would be
gazing in rapture at the vast sea glittering in the sunlight and the
boundless sky with its golden tints. Sometimes I would distinguish her at
the end of the valley, walking quickly with her elastic English step, and
I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see her
illuminated visage, her dried-up, ineffable features, which seemed to
glow with inward and profound happiness.

"I would often encounter her also in the corner of a field, sitting on
the grass under the shadow of an apple tree, with her little religious
booklet lying open on her knee while she gazed out at the distance.

"I could not tear myself away from that quiet country neighborhood, to
which I was attached by a thousand links of love for its wide and
peaceful landscape. I was happy in this sequestered farm, far removed
from everything, but in touch with the earth, the good, beautiful, green
earth. And--must I avow it?--there was, besides, a little
curiosity which retained me at the residence of Mother Lecacheur. I
wished to become acquainted a little with this strange Miss Harriet and
to know what transpires in the solitary souls of those wandering old
English women.

"We became acquainted in a rather singular manner. I had just finished a
study which appeared to me to be worth something, and so it was, as it
sold for ten thousand francs fifteen years later. It was as simple,
however, as two and two make four and was not according to academic
rules. The whole right side of my canvas represented a rock, an enormous
rock, covered with sea-wrack, brown, yellow and red, across which the sun
poured like a stream of oil. The light fell upon the rock as though it
were aflame without the sun, which was at my back, being visible. That
was all. A first bewildering study of blazing, gorgeous light.

"On the left was the sea, not the blue sea, the slate-colored sea, but a
sea of jade, greenish, milky and solid beneath the deep-colored sky.

"I was so pleased with my work that I danced from sheer delight as I
carried it back to the inn. I would have liked the whole world to see it
at once. I can remember that I showed it to a cow that was browsing by
the wayside, exclaiming as I did so: 'Look at that, my old beauty; you
will not often see its like again.'

"When I had reached the house I immediately called out to Mother
Lecacheur, shouting with all my might:

"'Hullo, there! Mrs. Landlady, come here and look at this.'

"The rustic approached and looked at my work with her stupid eyes which
distinguished nothing and could not even tell whether the picture
represented an ox or a house.

"Miss Harriet just then came home, and she passed behind me just as I was
holding out my canvas at arm's length, exhibiting it to our landlady. The
demoniac could not help but see it, for I took care to exhibit the thing
in such a way that it could not escape her notice. She stopped abruptly
and stood motionless, astonished. It was her rock which was depicted, the
one which she climbed to dream away her time undisturbed.

"She uttered a British 'Aoh,' which was at once so accentuated and so
flattering that I turned round to her, smiling, and said:

"'This is my latest study, mademoiselle.'

"She murmured rapturously, comically and tenderly:

"'Oh! monsieur, you understand nature as a living thing.'

"I colored and was more touched by that compliment than if it had come
from a queen. I was captured, conquered, vanquished. I could have
embraced her, upon my honor.

"I took my seat at table beside her as usual. For the first time she
spoke, thinking aloud:

"'Oh! I do love nature.'

"I passed her some bread, some water, some wine. She now accepted these
with a little smile of a mummy. I then began to talk about the scenery.

"After the meal we rose from the table together and walked leisurely
across the courtyard; then, attracted doubtless by the fiery glow which
the setting sun cast over the surface of the sea, I opened the gate which
led to the cliff, and we walked along side by side, as contented as two
persons might be who have just learned to understand and penetrate each
other's motives and feelings.

"It was one of those warm, soft evenings which impart a sense of ease to
flesh and spirit alike. All is enjoyment, everything charms. The balmy
air, laden with the perfume of grasses and the smell of seaweed, soothes
the olfactory sense with its wild fragrance, soothes the palate with its
sea savor, soothes the mind with its pervading sweetness.

"We were now walking along the edge of the cliff, high above the
boundless sea which rolled its little waves below us at a distance of a
hundred metres. And we drank in with open mouth and expanded chest that
fresh breeze, briny from kissing the waves, that came from the ocean and
passed across our faces.