Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 6

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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 VI.


THAT COSTLY RIDE
USELESS BEAUTY
THE FATHER
MY UNCLE SOSTHENES
THE BARONESS
MOTHER AND SON
THE HAND
A TRESS OF HAIR
ON THE RIVER
THE CRIPPLE
A STROLL
ALEXANDRE
THE LOG
JULIE ROMAINE
THE RONDOLI SISTERS




THAT COSTLY RIDE

The household lived frugally on the meager income derived from the
husband's insignificant appointments. Two children had been born of the
marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become
one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a noble
family--which in spite of misfortune never forgets its rank.

Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces, under the paternal
roof, by an aged priest. His people were not rich, but they managed to
live and to keep up appearances.

At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position, and he entered
the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at sixty pounds a year. He foundered on
the rock of life like all those who have not been early prepared for its
rude struggles, who look at life through a mist, who do not know how to
protect themselves, whose special aptitudes and faculties have not been
developed from childhood, whose early training has not developed the
rough energy needed for the battle of life or furnished them with tool or
weapon.

His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.

He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few friends of his family
--elderly people, far behind the times, and poor like himself, who
lived in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain; and he had created a social circle for himself.

Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these needy aristocrats lived
in the upper stories of sleepy, old-world houses. From top to bottom of
their dwellings the tenants were titled, but money seemed just as scarce
on the ground floor as in the attics.

Their eternal prejudices, absorption in their rank, anxiety lest they
should lose caste, filled the minds and thoughts of these families once
so brilliant, now ruined by the idleness of the men of the family. Hector
de Gribelin met in this circle a young girl as well born and as poor as
himself and married her.

They had two children in four years.

For four years more the husband and wife, harassed by poverty, knew no
other distraction than the Sunday walk in the Champs-Elysees and a few
evenings at the theatre (amounting in all to one or two in the course of
the winter) which they owed to free passes presented by some comrade or
other.

But in the spring of the following year some overtime work was entrusted
to Hector de Gribelin by his chief, for which he received the large sum
of three hundred francs.

The day he brought the money home he said to his wife:

"My dear Henrietta, we must indulge in some sort of festivity--say
an outing for the children."

And after a long discussion it was decided that they should go and lunch
one day in the country.

"Well," cried Hector, "once will not break us, so we'll hire a wagonette
for you, the children and the maid. And I'll have a saddle horse; the
exercise will do me good."

The whole week long they talked of nothing but the projected excursion.

Every evening, on his return from the office, Hector caught up his elder
son, put him astride his leg, and, making him bounce up and down as hard
as he could, said:

"That's how daddy will gallop next Sunday."

And the youngster amused himself all day long by bestriding chairs,
dragging them round the room and shouting:

"This is daddy on horseback!"

The servant herself gazed at her master with awestruck eyes as she
thought of him riding alongside the carriage, and at meal-times she
listened with all her ears while he spoke of riding and recounted the
exploits of his youth, when he lived at home with his father. Oh, he had
learned in a good school, and once he felt his steed between his legs he
feared nothing--nothing whatever!

Rubbing his hands, he repeated gaily to his wife:

"If only they would give me a restive animal I should be all the better
pleased. You'll see how well I can ride; and if you like we'll come back
by the Champs-Elysees just as all the people are returning from the Bois.
As we shall make a good appearance, I shouldn't at all object to meeting
some one from the ministry. That is all that is necessary to insure the
respect of one's chiefs."

On the day appointed the carriage and the riding horse arrived at the
same moment before the door. Hector went down immediately to examine his
mount. He had had straps sewn to his trousers and flourished in his hand
a whip he had bought the evening before.

He raised the horse's legs and felt them one after another, passed his
hand over the animal's neck, flank and hocks, opened his mouth, examined
his teeth, declared his age; and then, the whole household having
collected round him, he delivered a discourse on the horse in general and
the specimen before him in particular, pronouncing the latter excellent
in every respect.

When the rest of the party had taken their seats in the carriage he
examined the saddle-girth; then, putting his foot in the stirrup, he
sprang to the saddle. The animal began to curvet and nearly threw his
rider.

Hector, not altogether at his ease, tried to soothe him:

"Come, come, good horse, gently now!"

Then, when the horse had recovered his equanimity and the rider his
nerve, the latter asked:

"Are you ready?"

The occupants of the carriage replied with one voice:

"Yes."

"Forward!" he commanded.

And the cavalcade set out.

All looks were centered on him. He trotted in the English style, rising
unnecessarily high in the saddle; looking at times as if he were mounting
into space. Sometimes he seemed on the point of falling forward on the
horse's mane; his eyes were fixed, his face drawn, his cheeks pale.

His wife, holding one of the children on her knees, and the servant, who
was carrying the other, continually cried out:

"Look at papa! look at papa!"

And the two boys, intoxicated by the motion of the carriage, by their
delight and by the keen air, uttered shrill cries. The horse, frightened
by the noise they made, started off at a gallop, and while Hector was
trying to control his steed his hat fell off, and the driver had to get
down and pick it up. When the equestrian had recovered it he called to
his wife from a distance:

"Don't let the children shout like that! They'll make the horse bolt!"

They lunched on the grass in the Vesinet woods, having brought provisions
with them in the carriage.

Although the driver was looking after the three horses, Hector rose every
minute to see if his own lacked anything; he patted him on the neck and
fed him with bread, cakes and sugar.

"He's an unequal trotter," he declared. "He certainly shook me up a
little at first, but, as you saw, I soon got used to it. He knows his
master now and won't give any more trouble."

As had been decided, they returned by the Champs-Elysees.

That spacious thoroughfare literally swarmed with vehicles of every kind,
and on the sidewalks the pedestrians were so numerous that they looked
like two indeterminate black ribbons unfurling their length from the Arc
de Triomphe to the Place de la Concorde. A flood of sunlight played on
this gay scene, making the varnish of the carriages, the steel of the
harness and the handles of the carriage doors shine with dazzling
brilliancy.

An intoxication of life and motion seemed to have invaded this assemblage
of human beings, carriages and horses. In the distance the outlines of
the Obelisk could be discerned in a cloud of golden vapor.

As soon as Hector's horse had passed the Arc de Triomphe he became
suddenly imbued with fresh energy, and, realizing that his stable was not
far off, began to trot rapidly through the maze of wheels, despite all
his rider's efforts to restrain him.

The carriage was now far behind. When the horse arrived opposite the
Palais de l'Industrie he saw a clear field before him, and, turning to
the right, set off at a gallop.

An old woman wearing an apron was crossing the road in leisurely fashion.
She happened to be just in Hector's way as he arrived on the scene riding
at full speed. Powerless to control his mount, he shouted at the top of
his voice:

"Hi! Look out there! Hi!"

She must have been deaf, for she continued peacefully on her way until
the awful moment when, struck by the horse's chest as by a locomotive
under full steam, she rolled ten paces off, turning three somersaults on
the way.

Voices yelled:

"Stop him!"

Hector, frantic with terror, clung to the horse's mane and shouted:

"Help! help!"

A terrible jolt hurled him, as if shot from a gun, over his horse's ears
and cast him into the arms of a policeman who was running up to stop him.

In the space of a second a furious, gesticulating, vociferating group had
gathered round him. An old gentleman with a white mustache, wearing a
large round decoration, seemed particularly exasperated. He repeated:

"Confound it! When a man is as awkward as all that he should remain at
home and not come killing people in the streets, if he doesn't know how
to handle a horse."

Four men arrived on the scene, carrying the old woman. She appeared to be
dead. Her skin was like parchment, her cap on one side and she was
covered with dust.

"Take her to a druggist's," ordered the old gentleman, "and let us go to
the commissary of police."

Hector started on his way with a policeman on either side of him, a third
was leading his horse. A crowd followed them--and suddenly the
wagonette appeared in sight. His wife alighted in consternation, the
servant lost her head, the children whimpered. He explained that he would
soon be at home, that he had knocked a woman down and that there was not
much the matter. And his family, distracted with anxiety, went on their
way.

When they arrived before the commissary the explanation took place in few
words. He gave his name--Hector de Gribelin, employed at the
Ministry of Marine; and then they awaited news of the injured woman. A
policeman who had been sent to obtain information returned, saying that
she had recovered consciousness, but was complaining of frightful
internal pain. She was a charwoman, sixty-five years of age, named Madame
Simon.

When he heard that she was not dead Hector regained hope and promised to
defray her doctor's bill. Then he hastened to the druggist's. The door
way was thronged; the injured woman, huddled in an armchair, was
groaning. Her arms hung at her sides, her face was drawn. Two doctors
were still engaged in examining her. No bones were broken, but they
feared some internal lesion.

Hector addressed her:

"Do you suffer much?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Where is the pain?"

"I feel as if my stomach were on fire."

A doctor approached.

"Are you the gentleman who caused the accident?"

"I am."

"This woman ought to be sent to a home. I know one where they would take
her at six francs a day. Would you like me to send her there?"

Hector was delighted at the idea, thanked him and returned home much
relieved.

His wife, dissolved in tears, was awaiting him. He reassured her.

"It's all right. This Madame Simon is better already and will be quite
well in two or three days. I have sent her to a home. It's all right."

When he left his office the next day he went to inquire for Madame Simon.
He found her eating rich soup with an air of great satisfaction.

"Well?" said he.

"Oh, sir," she replied, "I'm just the same. I feel sort of
crushed--not a bit better."

The doctor declared they must wait and see; some complication or other
might arise.

Hector waited three days, then he returned. The old woman, fresh-faced
and clear-eyed, began to whine when she saw him:

"I can't move, sir; I can't move a bit. I shall be like this for the rest
of my days."

A shudder passed through Hector's frame. He asked for the doctor, who
merely shrugged his shoulders and said:

"What can I do? I can't tell what's wrong with her. She shrieks when they
try to raise her. They can't even move her chair from one place to
another without her uttering the most distressing cries. I am bound to
believe what she tells me; I can't look into her inside. So long as I
have no chance of seeing her walk I am not justified in supposing her to
be telling lies about herself."

The old woman listened, motionless, a malicious gleam in her eyes.

A week passed, then a fortnight, then a month. Madame Simon did not leave
her armchair. She ate from morning to night, grew fat, chatted gaily with
the other patients and seemed to enjoy her immobility as if it were the
rest to which she was entitled after fifty years of going up and down
stairs, of turning mattresses, of carrying coal from one story to
another, of sweeping and dusting.

Hector, at his wits' end, came to see her every day. Every day he found
her calm and serene, declaring:

"I can't move, sir; I shall never be able to move again."

Every evening Madame de Gribelin, devoured with anxiety, said:

"How is Madame Simon?"

And every time he replied with a resignation born of despair:

"Just the same; no change whatever."

They dismissed the servant, whose wages they could no longer afford. They
economized more rigidly than ever. The whole of the extra pay had been
swallowed up.

Then Hector summoned four noted doctors, who met in consultation over the
old woman. She let them examine her, feel her, sound her, watching them
the while with a cunning eye.

"We must make her walk," said one.

"But, sirs, I can't!" she cried. "I can't move!"

Then they took hold of her, raised her and dragged her a short distance,
but she slipped from their grasp and fell to the floor, groaning and
giving vent to such heartrending cries that they carried her back to her
seat with infinite care and precaution.

They pronounced a guarded opinion--agreeing, however, that work was
an impossibility to her.

And when Hector brought this news to his wife she sank on a chair,
murmuring:

"It would be better to bring her here; it would cost us less."

He started in amazement.

"Here? In our own house? How can you think of such a thing?"

But she, resigned now to anything, replied with tears in her eyes:

"But what can we do, my love? It's not my fault!"




USELESS BEAUTY

I

About half-past five one afternoon at the end of June when the sun was
shining warm and bright into the large courtyard, a very elegant victoria
with two beautiful black horses drew up in front of the mansion.

The Comtesse de Mascaret came down the steps just as her husband, who was
coming home, appeared in the carriage entrance. He stopped for a few
moments to look at his wife and turned rather pale. The countess was very
beautiful, graceful and distinguished looking, with her long oval face,
her complexion like yellow ivory, her large gray eyes and her black hair;
and she got into her carriage without looking at him, without even
seeming to have noticed him, with such a particularly high-bred air, that
the furious jealousy by which he had been devoured for so long again
gnawed at his heart. He went up to her and said: "You are going for a
drive?"

She merely replied disdainfully: "You see I am!"

"In the Bois de Boulogne?"

"Most probably."

"May I come with you?"

"The carriage belongs to you."

Without being surprised at the tone in which she answered him, he got in
and sat down by his wife's side and said: "Bois de Boulogne." The footman
jumped up beside the coachman, and the horses as usual pranced and tossed
their heads until they were in the street. Husband and wife sat side by
side without speaking. He was thinking how to begin a conversation, but
she maintained such an obstinately hard look that he did not venture to
make the attempt. At last, however, he cunningly, accidentally as it
were, touched the countess' gloved hand with his own, but she drew her
arm away with a movement which was so expressive of disgust that he
remained thoughtful, in spite of his usual authoritative and despotic
character, and he said: "Gabrielle!"

"What do you want?"

"I think you are looking adorable."

She did not reply, but remained lying back in the carriage, looking like
an irritated queen. By that time they were driving up the Champs Elysees,
toward the Arc de Triomphe. That immense monument, at the end of the long
avenue, raised its colossal arch against the red sky and the sun seemed
to be descending on it, showering fiery dust on it from the sky.

The stream of carriages, with dashes of sunlight reflected in the silver
trappings of the harness and the glass of the lamps, flowed on in a
double current toward the town and toward the Bois, and the Comte de
Mascaret continued: "My dear Gabrielle!"

Unable to control herself any longer, she replied in an exasperated
voice: "Oh! do leave me in peace, pray! I am not even allowed to have my
carriage to myself now." He pretended not to hear her and continued: "You
never have looked so pretty as you do to-day."

Her patience had come to an end, and she replied with irrepressible
anger: "You are wrong to notice it, for I swear to you that I will never
have anything to do with you in that way again."

The count was decidedly stupefied and upset, and, his violent nature
gaining the upper hand, he exclaimed: "What do you mean by that?" in a
tone that betrayed rather the brutal master than the lover. She replied
in a low voice, so that the servants might not hear amid the deafening
noise of the wheels: "Ah! What do I mean by that? What do I mean by that?
Now I recognize you again! Do you want me to tell everything?"

"Yes."

"Everything that has weighed on my heart since I have been the victim of
your terrible selfishness?"

He had grown red with surprise and anger and he growled between his
closed teeth: "Yes, tell me everything."

He was a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a big red beard, a handsome
man, a nobleman, a man of the world, who passed as a perfect husband and
an excellent father, and now, for the first time since they had started,
she turned toward him and looked him full in the face: "Ah! You will hear
some disagreeable things, but you must know that I am prepared for
everything, that I fear nothing, and you less than any one to-day."

He also was looking into her eyes and was already shaking with rage as he
said in a low voice: "You are mad."

"No, but I will no longer be the victim of the hateful penalty of
maternity, which you have inflicted on me for eleven years! I wish to
take my place in society as I have the right to do, as all women have the
right to do."

He suddenly grew pale again and stammered: "I do not understand you."

"Oh! yes; you understand me well enough. It is now three months since I
had my last child, and as I am still very beautiful, and as, in spite of
all your efforts you cannot spoil my figure, as you just now perceived,
when you saw me on the doorstep, you think it is time that I should think
of having another child."

"But you are talking nonsense!"

"No, I am not, I am thirty, and I have had seven children, and we have
been married eleven years, and you hope that this will go on for ten
years longer, after which you will leave off being jealous."

He seized her arm and squeezed it, saying: "I will not allow you to talk
to me like that much longer."

"And I shall talk to you till the end, until I have finished all I have
to say to you, and if you try to prevent me, I shall raise my voice so
that the two servants, who are on the box, may hear. I only allowed you
to come with me for that object, for I have these witnesses who will
oblige you to listen to me and to contain yourself, so now pay attention
to what I say. I have always felt an antipathy to you, and I have always
let you see it, for I have never lied, monsieur. You married me in spite
of myself; you forced my parents, who were in embarrassed circumstances,
to give me to you, because you were rich, and they obliged me to marry
you in spite of my tears.

"So you bought me, and as soon as I was in your power, as soon as I had
become your companion, ready to attach myself to you, to forget your
coercive and threatening proceedings, in order that I might only remember
that I ought to be a devoted wife and to love you as much as it might be
possible for me to love you, you became jealous, you, as no man has ever
been before, with the base, ignoble jealousy of a spy, which was as
degrading to you as it was to me. I had not been married eight months
when you suspected me of every perfidiousness, and you even told me so.
What a disgrace! And as you could not prevent me from being beautiful and
from pleasing people, from being called in drawing-rooms and also in the
newspapers one of the most beautiful women in Paris, you tried everything
you could think of to keep admirers from me, and you hit upon the
abominable idea of making me spend my life in a constant state of
motherhood, until the time should come when I should disgust every man.
Oh, do not deny it. I did not understand it for some time, but then I
guessed it. You even boasted about it to your sister, who told me of it,
for she is fond of me and was disgusted at your boorish coarseness.

"Ah! Remember how you have behaved in the past! How for eleven years you
have compelled me to give up all society and simply be a mother to your
children. And then you would grow disgusted with me and I was sent into
the country, the family chateau, among fields and meadows. And when I
reappeared, fresh, pretty and unspoiled, still seductive and constantly
surrounded by admirers, hoping that at last I should live a little more
like a rich young society woman, you were seized with jealousy again, and
you began once more to persecute me with that infamous and hateful desire
from which you are suffering at this moment by my side. And it is not the
desire of possessing me--for I should never have refused myself to
you, but it is the wish to make me unsightly.

"And then that abominable and mysterious thing occurred which I was a
long time in understanding (but I grew sharp by dint of watching your
thoughts and actions): You attached yourself to your children with all
the security which they gave you while I bore them. You felt affection
for them, with all your aversion to me, and in spite of your ignoble
fears, which were momentarily allayed by your pleasure in seeing me lose
my symmetry.

"Oh! how often have I noticed that joy in you! I have seen it in your
eyes and guessed it. You loved your children as victories, and not
because they were of your own blood. They were victories over me, over my
youth, over my beauty, over my charms, over the compliments which were
paid me and over those that were whispered around me without being paid
to me personally. And you are proud of them, you make a parade of them,
you take them out for drives in your break in the Bois de Boulogne and
you give them donkey rides at Montmorency. You take them to theatrical
matinees so that you may be seen in the midst of them, so that the people
may say: 'What a kind father' and that it may be repeated----"

He had seized her wrist with savage brutality, and he squeezed it so
violently that she was quiet and nearly cried out with the pain and he
said to her in a whisper:

"I love my children, do you hear? What you have just told me is
disgraceful in a mother. But you belong to me; I am master--your
master--I can exact from you what I like and when I like--and
I have the law-on my side."

He was trying to crush her fingers in the strong grip of his large,
muscular hand, and she, livid with pain, tried in vain to free them from
that vise which was crushing them. The agony made her breathe hard and
the tears came into her eyes. "You see that I am the master and the
stronger," he said. When he somewhat loosened his grip, she asked him:
"Do you think that I am a religious woman?"

He was surprised and stammered "Yes."

"Do you think that I could lie if I swore to the truth of anything to you
before an altar on which Christ's body is?"

"No."

"Will you go with me to some church?"

"What for?"

"You shall see. Will you?"

"If you absolutely wish it, yes."

She raised her voice and said: "Philippe!" And the coachman, bending down
a little, without taking his eyes from his horses, seemed to turn his ear
alone toward his mistress, who continued: "Drive to St.
Philippe-du-Roule." And the-victoria, which had reached the entrance of
the Bois de Boulogne returned to Paris.

Husband and wife did not exchange a word further during the drive, and
when the carriage stopped before the church Madame de Mascaret jumped out
and entered it, followed by the count, a few yards distant. She went,
without stopping, as far as the choir-screen, and falling on her knees at
a chair, she buried her face in her hands. She prayed for a long time,
and he, standing behind her could see that she was crying. She wept
noiselessly, as women weep when they are in great, poignant grief. There
was a kind of undulation in her body, which ended in a little sob, which
was hidden and stifled by her fingers.