Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 2

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GUY DE MAUPASSANT

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES

Translated by
ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others




VOLUME II.



THE COLONEL'S IDEAS
MOTHER SAUVAGE
EPIPHANY
THE MUSTACHE
MADAME BAPTISTE
THE QUESTION OF LATIN
A MEETING
THE BLIND MAN
INDISCRETION
A FAMILY AFFAIR
BESIDE SCHOPENHAUER'S CORPSE




THE COLONEL'S IDEAS

"Upon my word," said Colonel Laporte, "although I am old and gouty, my
legs as stiff as two pieces of wood, yet if a pretty woman were to tell
me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at
it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the
blood. I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a woman,
a pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of my toes. There!

"We are all very much alike in France in this respect; we still remain
knights, knights of love and fortune, since God has been abolished whose
bodyguard we really were. But nobody can ever get woman out of our
hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and
shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of follies on
her account as long as there is a France on the map of Europe; and even
if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen
left.

"When I am in the presence of a woman, of a pretty woman, I feel capable
of anything. By Jove! when I feel her looks penetrating me, her
confounded looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to do I
don't know what; to fight a duel, to have a row, to smash the furniture,
in order to show that I am the strongest, the bravest, the most daring
and the most devoted of men.

"But I am not the only one, certainly not; the whole French army is like
me, I swear to you. From the common soldier to the general, we all start
out, from the van to the rear guard, when there is a woman in the case, a
pretty woman. Do you remember what Joan of Arc made us do formerly? Come.
I will make a bet that if a pretty woman had taken command of the army on
the eve of Sedan, when Marshal MacMahon was wounded, we should have
broken through the Prussian lines, by Jove! and had a drink out of their
guns.

"It was not a Trochu, but a Sainte-Genevieve, who was needed in Paris;
and I remember a little anecdote of the war which proves that we are
capable of everything in presence of a woman.

"I was a captain, a simple captain, at the time, and I was in command of
a detachment of scouts, who were retreating through a district which
swarmed with Prussians. We were surrounded, pursued, tired out and half
dead with fatigue and hunger, but we were bound to reach Bar-sur-Tain
before the morrow, otherwise we should be shot, cut down, massacred. I do
not know how we managed to escape so far. However, we had ten leagues to
go during the night, ten leagues through the night, ten leagues through
the snow, and with empty stomachs, and I thought to myself:

"'It is all over; my poor devils of fellows will never be able to do it.'

"We had eaten nothing since the day before, and the whole day long we
remained hidden in a barn, huddled close together, so as not to feel the
cold so much, unable to speak or even move, and sleeping by fits and
starts, as one does when worn out with fatigue.

"It was dark by five o'clock, that wan darkness of the snow, and I shook
my men. Some of them would not get up; they were almost incapable of
moving or of standing upright; their joints were stiff from cold and
hunger.

"Before us there was a large expanse of flat, bare country; the snow was
still falling like a curtain, in large, white flakes, which concealed
everything under a thick, frozen coverlet, a coverlet of frozen wool One
might have thought that it was the end of the world.

"'Come, my lads, let us start.'

"They looked at the thick white flakes that were coming down, and they
seemed to think: 'We have had enough of this; we may just as well die
here!' Then I took out my revolver and said:

"'I will shoot the first man who flinches.' And so they set off, but very
slowly, like men whose legs were of very little use to them, and I sent
four of them three hundred yards ahead to scout, and the others followed
pell-mell, walking at random and without any order. I put the strongest
in the rear, with orders to quicken the pace of the sluggards with the
points of their bayonets in the back.

"The snow seemed as if it were going to bury us alive; it powdered our
kepis and cloaks without melting, and made phantoms of us, a kind of
spectres of dead, weary soldiers. I said to myself: 'We shall never get
out of this except by a miracle.'

"Sometimes we had to stop for a few minutes, on account of those who
could not follow us, and then we heard nothing except the falling snow,
that vague, almost undiscernible sound made by the falling flakes. Some
of the men shook themselves, others did not move, and so I gave the order
to set off again. They shouldered their rifles, and with weary feet we
resumed our march, when suddenly the scouts fell back. Something had
alarmed them; they had heard voices in front of them. I sent forward six
men and a sergeant and waited.

"All at once a shrill cry, a woman's cry, pierced through the heavy
silence of the snow, and in a few minutes they brought back two
prisoners, an old man and a girl, whom I questioned in a low voice. They
were escaping from the Prussians, who had occupied their house during the
evening and had got drunk. The father was alarmed on his daughter's
account, and, without even telling their servants, they had made their
escape in the darkness. I saw immediately that they belonged to the
better class. I invited them to accompany us, and we started off again,
the old man who knew the road acting as our guide.

"It had ceased snowing, the stars appeared and the cold became intense.
The girl, who was leaning on her father's arm, walked unsteadily as
though in pain, and several times she murmured:

"'I have no feeling at all in my feet'; and I suffered more than she did
to see that poor little woman dragging herself like that through the
snow. But suddenly she stopped and said:

"'Father, I am so tired that I cannot go any further.'

"The old man wanted to carry her, but he could not even lift her up, and
she sank to the ground with a deep sigh. We all gathered round her, and,
as for me, I stamped my foot in perplexity, not knowing what to do, and
being unwilling to abandon that man and girl like that, when suddenly one
of the soldiers, a Parisian whom they had nicknamed Pratique, said:

"'Come, comrades, we must carry the young lady, otherwise we shall not
show ourselves Frenchmen, confound it!'

"I really believe that I swore with pleasure. 'That is very good of you,
my children,' I said; 'and I will take my share of the burden.'

"We could indistinctly see, through the darkness, the trees of a little
wood on the left. Several of the men went into it, and soon came back
with a bundle of branches made into a litter.

"'Who will lend his cape? It is for a pretty girl, comrades,' Pratique
said, and ten cloaks were thrown to him. In a moment the girl was lying,
warm and comfortable, among them, and was raised upon six shoulders. I
placed myself at their head, on the right, well pleased with my position.

"We started off much more briskly, as if we had had a drink of wine, and
I even heard some jokes. A woman is quite enough to electrify Frenchmen,
you see. The soldiers, who had become cheerful and warm, had almost
reformed their ranks, and an old 'franc-tireur' who was following the
litter, waiting for his turn to replace the first of his comrades who
might give out, said to one of his neighbors, loud enough for me to hear:
"'I am not a young man now, but by---, there is nothing like the
women to put courage into you!'

"We went on, almost without stopping, until three o'clock in the morning,
when suddenly our scouts fell back once more, and soon the whole
detachment showed nothing but a vague shadow on the ground, as the men
lay on the snow. I gave my orders in a low voice, and heard the harsh,
metallic sound of the cocking, of rifles. For there, in the middle of the
plain, some strange object was moving about. It looked like some enormous
animal running about, now stretching out like a serpent, now coiling
itself into a ball, darting to the right, then to the left, then
stopping, and presently starting off again. But presently that wandering
shape came nearer, and I saw a dozen lancers at full gallop, one behind
the other. They had lost their way and were trying to find it.

"They were so near by that time that I could hear the loud breathing of
their horses, the clinking of their swords and the creaking of their
saddles, and cried: 'Fire!'

"Fifty rifle shots broke the stillness of the night, then there were four
or five reports, and at last one single shot was heard, and when the
smoke had cleared away, we saw that the twelve men and nine horses had
fallen. Three of the animals were galloping away at a furious pace, and
one of them was dragging the dead body of its rider, which rebounded
violently from the ground; his foot had caught in the stirrup.

"One of the soldiers behind me gave a terrible laugh and said: 'There
will be some widows there!'

"Perhaps he was married. A third added: 'It did not take long!'

"A head emerged from the litter.

"'What is the matter?' she asked; 'are you fighting?'

"'It is nothing, mademoiselle,' I replied; 'we have got rid of a dozen
Prussians!'

"'Poor fellows!' she said. But as she was cold, she quickly disappeared
beneath the cloaks again, and we started off once more. We marched on for
a long time, and at last the sky began to grow lighter. The snow became
quite clear, luminous and glistening, and a rosy tint appeared in the
east. Suddenly a voice in the distance cried:

"'Who goes there?'

"The whole detachment halted, and I advanced to give the countersign. We
had reached the French lines, and, as my men defiled before the outpost,
a commandant on horseback, whom I had informed of what had taken place,
asked in a sonorous voice, as he saw the litter pass him: 'What have you
in there?'

"And immediately a small head covered with light hair appeared,
dishevelled and smiling, and replied:

"'It is I, monsieur.'

"At this the men raised a hearty laugh, and we felt quite light-hearted,
while Pratique, who was walking by the side of the litter, waved his kepi
and shouted:

"'Vive la France!' And I felt really affected. I do not know why, except
that I thought it a pretty and gallant thing to say.

"It seemed to me as if we had just saved the whole of France and had done
something that other men could not have done, something simple and really
patriotic. I shall never forget that little face, you may be sure; and if
I had to give my opinion about abolishing drums, trumpets and bugles, I
should propose to replace them in every regiment by a pretty girl, and
that would be even better than playing the 'Marseillaise: By Jove! it
would put some spirit into a trooper to have a Madonna like that, a live
Madonna, by the colonel's side."

He was silent for a few moments and then continued, with an air of
conviction, and nodding his head:

"All the same, we are very fond of women, we Frenchmen!"




MOTHER SAUVAGE

Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne. I returned there in
the autumn to shoot with my friend Serval, who had at last rebuilt his
chateau, which the Prussians had destroyed.

I loved that district. It is one of those delightful spots which have a
sensuous charm for the eyes. You love it with a physical love. We, whom
the country enchants, keep tender memories of certain springs, certain
woods, certain pools, certain hills seen very often which have stirred us
like joyful events. Sometimes our thoughts turn back to a corner in a
forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard filled with flowers, seen but
a single time on some bright day, yet remaining in our hearts like the
image of certain women met in the street on a spring morning in their
light, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and body an unsatisfied desire
which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that you have just passed by
happiness.

At Virelogne I loved the whole countryside, dotted with little woods and
crossed by brooks which sparkled in the sun and looked like veins
carrying blood to the earth. You fished in them for crawfish, trout and
eels. Divine happiness! You could bathe in places and you often found
snipe among the high grass which grew along the borders of these small
water courses.

I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my two dogs running ahead
of me, Serval, a hundred metres to my right, was beating a field of
lucerne. I turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary of the
wood of Sandres and I saw a cottage in ruins.

Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last time, in 1869, neat,
covered with vines, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than a
dead house, with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?

I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very tiring day, the good
woman had given me a glass of wine to drink and that Serval had told me
the history of its people. The father, an old poacher, had been killed by
the gendarmes. The son, whom I had once seen, was a tall, dry fellow who
also passed for a fierce slayer of game. People called them "Les
Sauvage."

Was that a name or a nickname?

I called to Serval. He came up with his long strides like a crane.

I asked him:

"What's become of those people?"

This was his story:

When war was declared the son Sauvage, who was then thirty-three years
old, enlisted, leaving his mother alone in the house. People did not pity
the old woman very much because she had money; they knew it.

She remained entirely alone in that isolated dwelling, so far from the
village, on the edge of the wood. She was not afraid, however, being of
the same strain as the men folk--a hardy old woman, tall and thin,
who seldom laughed and with whom one never jested. The women of the
fields laugh but little in any case, that is men's business. But they
themselves have sad and narrowed hearts, leading a melancholy, gloomy
life. The peasants imbibe a little noisy merriment at the tavern, but
their helpmates always have grave, stern countenances. The muscles of
their faces have never learned the motions of laughter.

Mother Sauvage continued her ordinary existence in her cottage, which was
soon covered by the snows. She came to the village once a week to get
bread and a little meat. Then she returned to her house. As there was
talk of wolves, she went out with a gun upon her shoulder--her son's
gun, rusty and with the butt worn by the rubbing of the hand--and
she was a strange sight, the tall "Sauvage," a little bent, going with
slow strides over the snow, the muzzle of the piece extending beyond the
black headdress, which confined her head and imprisoned her white hair,
which no one had ever seen.

One day a Prussian force arrived. It was billeted upon the inhabitants,
according to the property and resources of each. Four were allotted to
the old woman, who was known to be rich.

They were four great fellows with fair complexion, blond beards and blue
eyes, who had not grown thin in spite of the fatigue which they had
endured already and who also, though in a conquered country, had remained
kind and gentle. Alone with this aged woman, they showed themselves full
of consideration, sparing her, as much as they could, all expense and
fatigue. They could be seen, all four of them, making their toilet at the
well in their shirt-sleeves in the gray dawn, splashing with great
swishes of water their pink-white northern skin, while La Mere Sauvage
went and came, preparing their soup. They would be seen cleaning the
kitchen, rubbing the tiles, splitting wood, peeling potatoes, doing up
all the housework like four good sons around their mother.

But the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, with
his hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mustache which made a
roll of black hair upon his lip. She asked every day of each of the
soldiers who were installed beside her hearth: "Do you know where the
French marching regiment, No. 23, was sent? My boy is in it."

They invariably answered, "No, we don't know, don't know a thing at all."
And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness--they who had
mothers, too, there at home--they rendered her a thousand little
services. She loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the
peasantry have no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class
alone. The humble, those who pay the most because they are poor and
because every new burden crushes them down; those who are killed in
masses, who make the true cannon's prey because they are so many; those,
in fine, who suffer most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because
they are the feeblest and offer least resistance--they hardly
understand at all those bellicose ardors, that excitable sense of honor
or those pretended political combinations which in six months exhaust two
nations, the conqueror with the conquered.

They said in the district, in speaking of the Germans of La Mere Sauvage:

"There are four who have found a soft place."

Now, one morning, when the old woman was alone in the house, she
observed, far off on the plain, a man coming toward her dwelling. Soon
she recognized him; it was the postman to distribute the letters. He gave
her a folded paper and she drew out of her case the spectacles which she
used for sewing. Then she read:

MADAME SAUVAGE: This letter is to tell you sad news. Your boy
Victor was killed yesterday by a shell which almost cut him in two.
I was near by, as we stood next each other in the company, and he
told me about you and asked me to let you know on the same day if
anything happened to him.

I took his watch, which was in his pocket, to bring it back to you
when the war is done.
CESAIRE RIVOT,

Soldier of the 2d class, March. Reg. No. 23.

The letter was dated three weeks back.

She did not cry at all. She remained motionless, so overcome and
stupefied that she did not even suffer as yet. She thought: "There's
Victor killed now." Then little by little the tears came to her eyes and
the sorrow filled her heart. Her thoughts came, one by one, dreadful,
torturing. She would never kiss him again, her child, her big boy, never
again! The gendarmes had killed the father, the Prussians had killed the
son. He had been cut in two by a cannon-ball. She seemed to see the
thing, the horrible thing: the head falling, the eyes open, while he
chewed the corner of his big mustache as he always did in moments of
anger.

What had they done with his body afterward? If they had only let her have
her boy back as they had brought back her husband--with the bullet
in the middle of the forehead!

But she heard a noise of voices. It was the Prussians returning from the
village. She hid her letter very quickly in her pocket, and she received
them quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes.

They were laughing, all four, delighted, for they brought with them a
fine rabbit--stolen, doubtless--and they made signs to the old
woman that there was to be something good to east.

She set herself to work at once to prepare breakfast, but when it came to
killing the rabbit, her heart failed her. And yet it was not the first.
One of the soldiers struck it down with a blow of his fist behind the
ears.

The beast once dead, she skinned the red body, but the sight of the blood
which she was touching, and which covered her hands, and which she felt
cooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to foot, and she kept
seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitating
animal.

She sat down at table with the Prussians, but she could not eat, not even
a mouthful. They devoured the rabbit without bothering themselves about
her. She looked at them sideways, without speaking, her face so impassive
that they perceived nothing.

All of a sudden she said: "I don't even know your names, and here's a
whole month that we've been together." They understood, not without
difficulty, what she wanted, and told their names.

That was not sufficient; she had them written for her on a paper, with
the addresses of their families, and, resting her spectacles on her great
nose, she contemplated that strange handwriting, then folded the sheet
and put it in her pocket, on top of the letter which told her of the
death of her son.

When the meal was ended she said to the men:

"I am going to work for you."

And she began to carry up hay into the loft where they slept.

They were astonished at her taking all this trouble; she explained to
them that thus they would not be so cold; and they helped her. They
heaped the stacks of hay as high as the straw roof, and in that manner
they made a sort of great chamber with four walls of fodder, warm and
perfumed, where they should sleep splendidly.

At dinner one of them was worried to see that La Mere Sauvage still ate
nothing. She told him that she had pains in her stomach. Then she kindled
a good fire to warm herself, and the four Germans ascended to their
lodging-place by the ladder which served them every night for this
purpose.

As soon as they closed the trapdoor the old woman removed the ladder,
then opened the outside door noiselessly and went back to look for more
bundles of straw, with which she filled her kitchen. She went barefoot in
the snow, so softly that no sound was heard. From time to time she
listened to the sonorous and unequal snoring of the four soldiers who
were fast asleep.

When she judged her preparations to be sufficient, she threw one of the
bundles into the fireplace, and when it was alight she scattered it over
all the others. Then she went outside again and looked.

In a few seconds the whole interior of the cottage was illumined with a
brilliant light and became a frightful brasier, a gigantic fiery furnace,
whose glare streamed out of the narrow window and threw a glittering beam
upon the snow.

Then a great cry issued from the top of the house; it was a clamor of men
shouting heartrending calls of anguish and of terror. Finally the
trapdoor having given way, a whirlwind of fire shot up into the loft,
pierced the straw roof, rose to the sky like the immense flame of a
torch, and all the cottage flared.

Nothing more was heard therein but the crackling of the fire, the
cracking of the walls, the falling of the rafters. Suddenly the roof fell
in and the burning carcass of the dwelling hurled a great plume of sparks
into the air, amid a cloud of smoke.

The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silver
tinted with red.

A bell, far off, began to toll.

The old "Sauvage" stood before her ruined dwelling, armed with her gun,
her son's gun, for fear one of those men might escape.

When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier. A
loud report followed.

People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.

They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied.

A German officer, but speaking French like a son of France, demanded:

"Where are your soldiers?"

She reached her bony arm toward the red heap of fire which was almost out
and answered with a strong voice:

"There!"

They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:

"How did it take fire?"

"It was I who set it on fire."

They did not believe her, they thought that the sudden disaster had made
her crazy. While all pressed round and listened, she told the story from
beginning to end, from the arrival of the letter to the last shriek of
the men who were burned with her house, and never omitted a detail.

When she had finished, she drew two pieces of paper from her pocket, and,
in order to distinguish them by the last gleams of the fire, she again
adjusted her spectacles. Then she said, showing one:

"That, that is the death of Victor." Showing the other, she added,
indicating the red ruins with a bend of the head: "Here are their names,
so that you can write home." She quietly held a sheet of paper out to the
officer, who held her by the shoulders, and she continued:

"You must write how it happened, and you must say to their mothers that
it was I who did that, Victoire Simon, la Sauvage! Do not forget."

The officer shouted some orders in German. They seized her, they threw
her against the walls of her house, still hot. Then twelve men drew
quickly up before her, at twenty paces. She did not move. She had
understood; she waited.

An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report. A belated shot
went off by itself, after the others.

The old woman did not fall. She sank as though they had cut off her legs.

The Prussian officer approached. She was almost cut in two, and in her
withered hand she held her letter bathed with blood.

My friend Serval added:

"It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of the
district, which belonged to me."