In 1881 “Paul’s Mistress” was published in de Maupassant’s volume entitled _La Maison Tellier_ and has appeared subsequently in only three editions in either French or English. (The English translations are very poor.) One of his lengthier short stories, it presents the tragedy of a boy of very good family, intelligent and sensitive, lost in infatuation for “a small thin brunette with a stride like a grasshopper’s.” At a riverside amusement park the couple encounters four women (two in men’s clothes) who are hailed by the holiday crowd with enthusiastic shouts of “Lesbos! Lesbos!” That Paul is revolted infuriates his companion, and in the course of the ensuing quarrel the boy faces the hitherto unacknowledged fact that he and Madeleine have nothing in common but their passion. Over his protests they return in the evening to dance in the pavilion, and his partner soon slips off with one of the transvestists. After an hour of fevered search the boy comes upon the two in a thicket, and in a frenzy of revulsion escapes unnoticed and throws himself into the river. When some hours later his body is recovered Madeleine weeps copiously, but then goes home with the lesbian, “her head on Pauline’s shoulder, as though it had found refuge there in a closer and more intimate affection.” Here, as in _Nana_, homosexuality is pictured at the prostitute’s level, but an additional causal factor is suggested in Madeleine’s boyish build and gait. (One of the women in trousers, however, is described with corrosive accuracy as fat-hipped.) De Maupassant’s judgment is quite clear. The exquisite beauty of the countryside, evoked with all his genius for description, is presented as the symbol of Paul’s spirit, the strident vulgarity of the dance hall as that of Madeleine’s. Every phrase of this sustained contrast points up the tragedy of fineness destroyed by depravity. Socially significant again is the comparative tolerance of lesbianism and transvestism among the respectable resort population. The two lesbian couples, living in a riverside cottage and entertaining so noisily that their neighbors protest to the police, are “investigated” with stupid solemnity. However, there is no more serious result than “a voluminous report of their innocence.” This caricature of official action produces only hearty laughter among the other cottagers. (Bernard Talmey, however, quotes a less complaisant report by Fiaux to the Municipal Council of Paris in 1887 on lesbian prostitution.)[5]