Original Short Stories — Volume 11
Fifteen tales of French provincial life, where nothing is quite as it seems. Maupassant dissects the bourgeoisie with surgical precision: the petty anxieties of a farmer's wife, the absurd pride of a man whose military glory exists only in his imagination, the quiet devastation hidden behind a christening party's smiles. His characters scheme, deceive, and occasionally self-destruct, all while maintaining the polite fictions of society. What elevates these stories beyond mere social satire is Maupassant's willingness to let his characters sympathetically exist in their smallness, their vanities, their fears, their desperate need to appear respectable. The prose is clean as glass, and every ending arrives like a door slamming shut, leaving the reader to sit with uncomfortable truths about human nature. These are stories that reward re-reading, their power often residing in what goes unsaid.
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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
