Original Short Stories — Volume 09
Guy de Maupassant wrote nearly 200 short stories in his brief career, and Volume 9 offers a concentrated dose of his particular genius: crystalline prose that cuts to the marrow of French provincial life. Here you'll find peasants and innkeepers, soldiers and husbands, all rendered with an anthropologist's precision and a satirist's glee. In "Toine," the massive innkeeper of Tournevent lies feverish yet still commands his domain from bed, hatching chickens against his wife's exasperated protests. Other tales turn darker: a husband's grotesque jealousy, a soldier's ridiculous "adventure," the petty cruelties of inheritance. Maupassant sees everything, misses nothing, and judges no one directly. His irony works through restraint, through the gap between what characters say and what they mean. These stories strip away the dignity of ordinary life, exposing its absurd machinery and small cruelties. They endure because the short story, in Maupassant's hands, achieves the depth of a novel in a fraction of the space.
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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
