Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De MaupassantMaupassant, Guy de
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Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant
Maupassant, Guy de
French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
“Then my companion, having seized the other wax candle, bent forward.
Next, he touched my arm without uttering a word. I followed his glance,
and saw on the ground, under the armchair by the side of the bed,
standing out white on the dark carpet, and open as if to bite,
Schopenhauer's set of artificial teeth.
“The work of decomposition, loosening the jaws, had made it jump out of
the mouth.
“I was really frightened that day, monsieur.”
And as the sun was sinking toward the glittering sea, the consumptive
German rose from his seat, gave me a parting bow, and retired into the
hotel.
ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, Vol. 3.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES Translated by ALBERT M. C.
McMASTER, B.A. A. E. HENDERSON, B.A. MME. QUESADA and Others
VOLUME III.
MISS HARRIET
There were seven of us on a drag, four women and three men; one of the
latter sat on the box seat beside the coachman. We were ascending, at a
snail's pace, the winding road up the steep cliff along the coast.
Setting out from Etretat at break of day in order to visit the ruins of
Tancarville, we were still half asleep, benumbed by the fresh air of the
morning. The women especially, who were little accustomed to these early
excursions, half opened and closed their eyes every moment, nodding
their heads or yawning, quite insensible to the beauties of the dawn.
It was autumn. On both sides of the road stretched the bare fields,
yellowed by the stubble of wheat and oats which covered the soil like a
beard that had been badly shaved. The moist earth seemed to steam. Larks
were singing high up in the air, while other birds piped in the bushes.
The sun rose at length in front of us, bright red on the plane of the
horizon, and in proportion as it ascended, growing clearer from minute
to minute, the country seemed to awake, to smile, to shake itself like a
young girl leaving her bed in her white robe of vapor. The Comte
d'Etraille, who was seated on the box, cried:
“Look! look! a hare!” and he extended his arm toward the left, pointing
to a patch of clover. The animal scurried along, almost hidden by the
clover, only its large ears showing. Then it swerved across a furrow,
stopped, started off again at full speed, changed its course, stopped
anew, uneasy, spying out every danger, uncertain what route to take,
when suddenly it began to run with great bounds, disappearing finally in
a large patch of beet-root. All the men had waked up to watch the course
of the animal.
Rene Lamanoir exclaimed:
“We are not at all gallant this morning,” and; regarding his neighbor,
the little Baroness de Serennes, who struggled against sleep, he said to
her in a low tone: “You are thinking of your husband, baroness. Reassure
yourself; he will not return before Saturday, so you have still four
days.”
She answered with a sleepy smile:
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