y that suffuses his pages after reading Huysmans's immitigable
exposition of the ugly and his unflinching attitude before the
unpleasant. And Huysmans's point of departure is seldom from an idea;
facts furnish him with an adequate spring-board. Maupassant is more
lyric in tone and texture. Edmond de Goncourt, jealous of the success
of the newcomer, wrote in his diary that Maupassant was an admirable
conteur, but a great writer, never. Zola admitted to a few intimates
that Guy was not the realist that Huysmans was. All of which is
interesting, but proves nothing except that Maupassant wrote a
marvellous collection of short stories, real, hyphenated
short-stories, as Mr. Brander Matthews makes the delicate distinction,
while Huysmans did not.

Edouard Maynial's La Vie et l'Oeuvre de Guy de Maupassant is the
most recent of the biographical studies devoted to our subject, though
Baron Albert Lumbroso, who escapes by a single letter from being
confounded with the theory-ridden Turin psychiatrist, has given us,
with the approval of Guy's mother, the definitive study of
Maupassant's malady and death. It is frequently quoted by Maynial;
there is a careful study of it which appeared in _Mercure de France_,
June, 1905, by Louis Thomas. And there is that charming volume, Amitie
amoureuse, in which Guy is said to figure as the Philippe, by Henri
Amic and Madame Lecomte du Nouy. Here we get another Maupassant, not
the taureau triste of Taine, but a delightful, sweet-tempered,
unselfish, and altogether lovable fellow. What was the cause of his
downfall? Dissipation? Mental overwork--which is the same thing?
Disease? Maynial, Lumbroso, and Thomas offer us such a variety of
documents that there can be no doubt as to the determining element.
From 1880 to his death in 1893 Guy de Maupassant was "a candidate for
general paralysis." These are the words of his doctor, later approved
by Doctor Blanche, to whose sanitarium in Paris he was taken, January
7, 1893.

The father of Guy was Gustave de Maupassant, of an ancient Lorraine
family. This family was noble. His mother was of Norman extraction,
Laure de Poittevin, the sister of Alfred de Poittevin, Flaubert's
dearest friend, a poet who died young. There is no truth in the gossip
that Guy was the son of Flaubert. Flaubert loved both the Poittevins;
hence his lively interest in Guy. There was a younger brother, Herve
de Maupassant, who died of a mental disorder. His daughter, Simone, is
th