Original Short Stories — Volume 04
Guy de Maupassant was a surgeon with a pen. In this fourth volume of his remarkable short fiction, he dissects French provincial life with clinical precision and dark amusement. The stories gathered here span the breadth of human folly: a farmer's wife contemplating her husband's mortality with more concern for the livestock than grief; a man who invents an elaborate military victory to impress his friends; a christening that becomes a battlefield of pettyvanity; a devil who perhaps understands human nature better than humans do themselves. Maupassant populates these tales with peasants, soldiers, priests, and small-town bourgeoisie, all rendered in prose so clean it seems to have been carved from ice. The signature Maupassant irony runs through every page: he rarely judges his characters, preferring instead to let their own contradictions speak for themselves. The result is both funny and devastating. These are stories where nothing extraordinary happens except that life, in all its quiet cruelty and absurdity, is revealed for what it truly is. For readers who appreciate fiction that cuts rather than caresses.
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“But I no longer had a taste for anything, a wish for anything, a love for anybody, a desire for anything whatever, any ambition, or any hope.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt."[As quoted in Pol Neveux's introduction, ]””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Some people are Freethinkers from sheer stupidity. My Uncle Sosthenes was one of these. Some people are often religious for the same reason.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Is it not rather the touch of Love, of Love the Mysterious, who seeks constantly to unite two beings, who tries his strength the instant he has put a man and a woman face to face?””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Death need not be sad, it should be a matter of indifference.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Then, one by one, they went away, for night was falling on the storm, wrapping in shadows the raging ocean and all the battling elements.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea.””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Ah! Those silly songs make us lose our heads; and, believe me, never marry a woman who sings in the country, especially if she sings the song of Musette!””
— Guy de Maupassant
“Monsieur, beware of love! It is lying in ambush everywhere; it is watching for you at every corner; all its snares are laid, all its weapons are sharpened, all its guiles are prepared! Beware of love! Beware of love! It is more dangerous than brandy, bronchitis or pleurisy! It never forgives and makes everybody commit irreparable follies.””
— Guy de Maupassant
