The Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
Volume 1, by Guy de Maupassant

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Title: Original Short Stories of Maupassant, Volume 1

Author: Guy de Maupassant

Last Updated: February 11, 2009
Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #3077]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAUPASSANT SHORT STORIES ***

Produced by David Widger

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES

by Guy de Maupassant

Translated by:

ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.

A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.

MME. QUESADA and Others

VOLUME I.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT--A STUDY BY POL. NEVEUX

BOULE DE SUIF
TWO FRIENDS
THE LANCER'S WIFE
THE PRISONERS
TWO LITTLE SOLDIERS
FATHER MILON
A COUP D'ETAT
LIEUTENANT LARE'S MARRIAGE
THE HORRIBLE
MADAME PARISSE
MADEMOISELLE FIFI
A DUEL

GUY DE MAUPASSANT--A STUDY BY POL. NEVEUX

"I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a
thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to Jose Maria de Heredia on the
occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity,
not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten
years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility
of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and travels, only to
sink prematurely into the abyss of madness and death.....

In the month of April, 1880, an article appeared in the "Le Gaulois"
announcing the publication of the Soirees de Medan. It was signed by
a name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe
against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature,
the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the
publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the
quiet of evening, on an island, in the Seine, beneath poplars instead
of the Neapolitan cypresses dear to the friends of Boccaccio, amid
the continuous murmur of the valley, and no longer to the sound of the
Pyrennean streams that murmured a faint accompaniment to the tales
of Marguerite's cavaliers, the master and his disciples took turns in
narrating so