returned in _Toine_ (1886) and in _La Petite roque_ (1886). About this time appeared the first symptoms of the malady which destroyed him; he wrote less, and though the novel _Mont-Oriol_ (1887) shows him apparently in undiminished possession of his faculty, _Le Horla_ (1887) suggests that he was already subject to alarming hallucinations. Restored to some extent by a sea-voyage, recorded in _Sur l'eau_ (1888), he went back to short stories in _Le Rosier de Madame Husson_ (1888), a burst of Rabelaisian humour equal to anything he had ever written. His novels _Pierre et Jean_ (1888), _Fort comme la mort_ (1889), and _Notre coeur_ (1890) are penetrating studies touched with a profounder sympathy than had hitherto distinguished him; and this softening into pity for the tragedy of life is deepened in some of the tales included in _Inutile beauté_ (1890). One of these, _Le Champ d'Oliviers_, is an unsurpassable example of poignant, emotional narrative. With _La Vie errante_ (1890), a volume of travels, Maupassant's career practically closed. _Musotte_, a theatrical piece written in collaboration with M. Jacques Normand, was published in 1891. By this time inherited nervous maladies, aggravated by excessive physical exercises and by the imprudent use of drugs, had undermined his constitution. He began to take an interest in religious problems, and for a while made the _Imitation_ his handbook; but his misanthropy deepened, and he suffered from curious delusions as to his wealth and rank. A victim of general paralysis, of which _La Folie des grandeurs_ was one of the symptoms, he drank the waters at Aix-les-Bains during the summer of 1891, and retired to Cannes, where he purposed passing the winter. The singularities of conduct which had been observed at Aix-les-Bains grew more and more marked. Maupassant's reason slowly gave way. On the 6th of January 1892 he attempted suicide, and was removed to Paris, where he died in the most painful circumstances on the 6th of July 1893. He is buried in the cemetery of Montparnasse. The opening chapters of two projected novels, _L'Angélus_ and _L'Ame étrangère_, were found among his papers; these, with _La Paix du ménage_, a comedy in two acts, and two collections of tales, _Le Père Milon_ (1898) and _Le Colporteur_ (1899), have been published posthumously. A correspondence, called _Amitié amoureuse_ (1897), and dedicated to his mother, is probably unauthentic. Among the prefaces which he wrote for the works of others, only one--an introduction to a French prose version of Mr Swinburne's _Poems and Ballads_--is likely to interest English readers.