The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 1

The Count nearly choked; the manufacturer held both his sides.

"And you can understand that he does not quite see the joke of the thing this evening – oh, no – not at all!"

And they all three went off again, breathless, choking, sick with laughter.

After that they parted for the night. But Madame Loiseau remarked to her husband when they were alone that that little cat of a Carré-Lamadon had laughed on the wrong side of her mouth all the evening. "You know how it is with these women – they dote upon a uniform, and whether it is French or Prussian matters precious little to them. But, Lord – it seems to me a poor way of looking at things."

Apparently nobody got much sleep that night, for it was long before the lights ceased to shine under the doors. Champagne, they say, often has that disturbing effect; it makes one restless and wakeful.

Next morning a brilliant winter sun shone on the dazzling snow. The diligence was by this time ready and waiting before the door, while a flock of white pigeons, muffled in their thick plumage, strutted solemnly in and out among the feet of the six horses, seeking what they might devour.

The driver, enveloped in his sheepskin, sat on the box smoking his pipe, and the radiant travelers were busily laying in provisions for the rest of the journey.

They were only waiting now for Boule de Suif. She appeared.

She looked agitated and downcast as she advanced timidly towards her fellow travelers, who all, with one movement, turned away their heads as if they had not seen her. The Count, with a dignified movement, took his wife by the arm and drew her away from this contaminating contact.

The poor thing stopped short, bewildered; then gathering up her courage she accosted the wife of the manufacturer with a humble "Good morning, Madame." The other merely replied with an impertinent little nod, accompanied by a stare of outraged virtue. Everybody seemed suddenly extremely busy, and they avoided her as if she had brought the plague in her skirts. They then precipitated themselves into the vehicle, where she arrived the last and by herself, and resumed in silence the seat she had occupied during the first part of the journey.

They affected not to see her, not to recognize her; only Madame Loiseau, glancing round at her with scorn and indignation, said half audibly to her husband, "It's a good thing that I am not sitting beside her!"

The heavy conveyance jolted off, and the journey recommenced.

No one spoke for the first little while. Boule de Suif did not venture to raise her eyes. She felt incensed at her companions, and at the same time deeply humiliated at having yielded to their persuasions, and let herself be sullied by the kisses of this Prussian into whose arms they had hypocritically thrust her.

The Countess was the first to break the uncomfortable silence. Turning to Madame Carré-Lamadon, she said, "You know Madame d'Etrelles, I think?"

"Oh, yes; she is a great friend of mine."

"What a charming woman!"

"Fascinating! So truly refined; very cultivated, too, and an artist to the tips of her fingers – she sings delightfully, and draws to perfection."

The manufacturer was talking to the Count, and through the rattle of the crazy windowpanes one caught a word here and there; shares – dividends – premium – settling day – and the like. Loiseau, who had appropriated an old pack of cards from the inn, thick with the grease of the five years' rubbing on dirty tables, started a game of bezique with his wife. The two Sisters pulled up the long rosaries hanging at their waists, made the sign of the cross, and suddenly began moving their lips rapidly, faster and faster, hurrying their vague babble as if for a wager; kissing a medal from time to time, crossing themselves again, and then resuming their rapid and monotonous murmur.

Cornudet sat motionless – thinking.

At the end of the three hours' steady traveling Loiseau gathered up his cards and remarked facetiously, "It's turning hungry."

His wife then produced a parcel, which she untied, and brought out a piece of cold veal. This she cut up into thin, firm slices, and both began to eat.

"Supposing we do the same?" said the Countess, and proceeded to unpack the provisions prepared for both couples. In one of those oblong dishes with a china hare upon the cover to indicate that a roast hare lies beneath, was a succulent selection of cold viands – brown slices of juicy venison mingled with other meats. A delicious square of gruyere cheese wrapped in newspaper still bore imprinted on its dewy surface the words "General News."

The two Sisters brought out a sausage smelling of garlic, and Cornudet, plunging his hands into the vast pockets of his loose greatcoat, drew up four hard-boiled eggs from one and a big crust of bread from the other. He peeled off the shells and threw them into the straw under his feet, and proceeded to bite into the egg, dropping pieces of the yolk into his long beard, from whence they shone out like stars.

In the hurry and confusion of the morning Boule de Suif had omitted to take thought for the future, and she looked on, furious, choking with mortification, at these people all munching away so placidly. A storm of rage convulsed her, and she opened her mouth to hurl at them the torrent of abuse that rose to her lips, but she could not speak, suffocated by her indignation.

Nobody looked at her, nobody thought of her. She felt herself drowning in the flood of contempt shown towards her by these honest scoundrels who had first sacrificed her and then cast her off like some useless and unclean thing. Then her thoughts reverted to her great basket full of good things which they had so greedily devoured – the two fowls in their glittering coat of jelly, her patties, her pears, her four bottles of claret; and her fury suddenly subsided like the breaking of an overstrung chord and she felt that she was on the verge of tears. She made the most strenuous efforts to overcome it – straightened herself up and choked back her sobs as children do, but the tears would rise. They glittered for a moment on her lashes, and presently two big drops rolled slowly over her cheeks. Others gathered in quick succession like water dripping from a rock and splashed onto the ample curve of her bosom. She sat up very straight, her eyes fixed, her face pale and rigid, hoping that nobody would notice.

But the Countess saw her and nudged her husband. He shrugged his shoulders as much as to say, "What can you expect? It is not my fault." Madame Loiseau gave a silent chuckle of triumph and murmured, "She is crying for shame." The two Sisters had resumed their devotions after carefully wrapping up the remnants of their sausages.

Then Cornudet, while digesting his eggs, stretched his long legs under the opposite seat, leaned back, smiled like a man who has just thought of a capital joke, and began to softly whistle the Marseillaise.

The faces clouded; the popular air seemed unpleasing to his neighbors; they became nervous – irritable – looking as if they were ready to throw back their heads and howl like dogs at the sound of a barrel organ. He was perfectly aware of this, but did not stop. From time to time he hummed a few of the words: "Liberty, cherished liberty, Fight thou on the side of thy defenders."

They drove at a much quicker pace to-day, the snow being harder; and all the way to Dieppe, during the long, dull hours of the journey, through all the jolting and rattling of the conveyance, in the falling shades of evening and later in the profound darkness, he continued with unabated persistency his vengeful and monotonous whistling; forcing his wearied and exasperated fellow travelers to follow the song from end to end and to remember every word that corresponded to each note.

And Boule de Suif wept on, and at times a sob which she could not repress broke out between two couplets in the darkness.

MISS HARRIET

There were seven of us in a break, four women and three men, one of which latter was on the box seat beside the coachman, and we were following, at a foot pace, the broad highway which serpentines along the coast.

Setting out from Etretat at break of day, in order to visit the ruins of Tancarville, we were still asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the morning. The women, especially, who were little accustomed to these early excursions, let their eyelids fall and rise every moment, nodding their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the emotion of the breaking of day.

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

The sun rose at length in front of us, a 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, stretch itself, like a young girl who is leaving her bed, in her white vapor chemise. The Count of Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:

"Look! look! a hare!" and he extended his arm towards the left, pointing to a piece of hedge. The animal threaded its way along, almost concealed by the field, raising only its large ears. Then it swerved across a deep rut, stopped, pursued again its easy course, changed its direction, stopped anew, disturbed, spying out every danger, undecided as to the route it should take; when suddenly it began to run with great bounds of the hind legs, disappearing finally, in a large patch of beet-root. All the men had woke up to watch the course of the beast.

René Lemanoir then exclaimed:

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

She responded to him with a sleepy smile: "How rude you are." Then, shaking off her torpor, she added: "Now, let somebody say something that will make us all laugh. You, Monsieur Chenal, who have the reputation of possessing a larger fortune than the Duke of Richelieu, tell us a love story in which you have been mixed up, anything you like."

Léon Chenal, an old painter, who had once been very handsome, very strong, very proud of his physique, and very amiable, took his long white beard in his hand and smiled, then, after a few moments' reflection, he became suddenly grave.

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

I

I was at the time twenty-five years of age, and I was making daubs along the coast of Normandy. I call "making daubs" that wandering about, with a bag on one's back, from mountain to mountain, under the pretext of studying and of sketching nature. I know 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 to-morrow. One goes in any direction one pleases, without any guide, save his fancy, without any counselor save his eyes. One pulls up, because a running brook seduces one, because one is attracted, in front of an inn, by the smell of potatoes frying. Sometimes it is the perfume of clematis which decides one in his choice, or the naïve 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 feeling, not to mention firm cheeks and fresh lips; while their hearty and willing kisses have the flavor of wild fruit. Love always has its price, come whence it may. A heart that beats when you make your appearance, 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 rendezvoux in ditches in which cattle repose, and in barns among the straw, still steaming from the heat of the day. I have recollections of canvas being spread on rude and elastic benches, and of hearty and fresh, free kisses, more delicate and unaffectedly sincere than the subtle attractions of charming and distinguished women.

But what one loves most amidst all these varied adventures is the country, the woods, the risings of the sun, the twilight, the light of the moon. These are, for the painter, honeymoon trips with nature. One is alone with her in that long and tranquil rendezvous. You go to bed in the fields, amidst marguerites and wild poppies, and, with eyes wide open, you watch the going down of the sun, and descry in the distance the little village, with its pointed clock tower, which sounds the hour of midnight.

You sit down by the side of a spring which gushes out from the foot of an oak, amidst a covering of fragile herbs, upright and redolent of life. You go down on your knees, bend forward, you drink that cold and pellucid water which wets your moustache and nose, you drink it with a physical pleasure, as though you kissed the spring, lip to lip. Sometimes, when you encounter a deep hole, along the course of these tiny brooks, you plunge into it, quite naked, and you feel on your skin, from head to foot, like an icy and delicious caress, the lovely and gentle quivering of the current.

You are gay on the hills, melancholy on the verge of pools, exalted when the sun is crowned in an ocean of blood-red shadows, and when it casts on the rivers its red reflection. And, at night, under the moon, which passes across the vault of heaven, you think of things, and singular 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 Falaise, between Yport and Etretat. I came from Fécamp, following the coast, a high coast, and as perpendicular as a wall, with its projecting and rugged rocks falling perpendicularly into the sea. I had walked since the morning on the shaven grass, as smooth and as yielding as a carpet. And singing lustily, I walked with long strides, looking sometimes at the slow and ambling flight of a gull, with its short, white wings, sailing in the blue heavens, sometimes on the green sea, at the brown sails of a fishing bark. In short, I had passed a happy day, a day of listlessness and of liberty.

I was shown a little farm house, where travelers were put up, a kind of inn, kept by a peasant, which stood in the center of a Norman court, which was surrounded by a double row of beeches.

Quitting the Falaise, I gained the hamlet, which was hemmed in by great trees, and I presented myself at the house of Mother Lecacheur.