apparently spontaneous writers.
His manuscripts are free from the interlineations of Flaubert. He
wrote at one jet; but there was elaborate mental preparation. Toward
the last began the ether inhalations, the chloroform, hasheesh, the
absinthe, cocaine, and the "odour symphonies"--Huysmans's des
Esseintes, and his symphonic perfume sprays were not altogether the
result of invention. On his yacht _Bel Ami_ Guy never ceased his daily
travail. It was Taine who called him un taureau triste. Paul Bourget
relates that when he told Maupassant of this epigram, he calmly
replied: "Better a bull than an ox."

His output--as they say in publishing circles--was breath-catching. It
is whispered that he worked all the better after a "hard night." Now
there can be but one end to such an expenditure of nervous energy, and
that end came, not suddenly, but with the treacherous, creeping
approach of paralysis. "Literary" criticism of the Nordau type is
usually a foolish thing; yet in Maupassant's case one does not need to
be a skilled psychiatrist to follow and note the gradual palsy of the
writer's higher centres. Such stories as Qui Sait? Lui, Le Horla--a
terrifying conception that beats Poe on his own chosen field--Fou, Un
Fou, and several others show the nature of his malady. Guy de
Maupassant came fairly by his cracked nervous constitution, and
instead of dissipation, mental and physical, being the determining
causes of his shattered health, they were really the outcome of an
inherited predisposition to all that is self-destructive. The French
alienists called it une heredite chargee. (No doubt the dread
Spirochaeta pallida.)

He never relaxed his diligence, even writing criticism. He saluted the
literary debuts of Paul Hervieu and Edouard Rod in an article which
appeared in _Gil Blas_. At the time of his death he was contemplating
an extensive study of Turgenieff. Edmond de Goncourt did not like him,
suspecting him of irreverence because of some words Guy had written in
the preface to Pierre et Jean about complicated exotic vocabularies;
meaning the Goncourts, of course. It is to be believed that Flaubert
also had some quiet fun with the brothers and with Zola regarding
their mania for note taking; read Bouvard et Pecuchet for confirmation
of this idea of mine.

Maupassant was paid one franc a line for his novels in the
periodicals, and 500 francs for the newspaper rights of publication
only; good prices twenty-five years ago i