"I have found something better. I have found everything. Modern life, modernity, I hold it, I have it, I express it. It is not in a sonnet, nor in a quatrain, nor even in a line, it is--" His voice grew weaker, became hoarse, wheezy, lost. His friend, with bloodshot eyes, gaping mouth, leaned over the bed to drink in his last word, the word that would give the key to the mystery, the Open Sesame to art in the future. "Speak, speak!" he cried. "Everything in one phrase, everything in one phrase!" murmured Bruat. And the old man raised himself up in a paroxysm of agony. His look was ecstatic. One felt that over the threshold of death he saw his ideal. He made a terrible effort to express it, and the wondrous phrase fell from his lips with his last sigh. It was, "Bonjour, Monsieur!" THE BIT OF STRING AND THE NECKLACE BY HENRI RENÉ ALBERT GUY DE MAUPASSANT [Illustration] _Guy de Maupassant, writer of the short story par excellence, was born at the Château of Miromesnil in 1850, and died insane at Paris in 1893. His godfather Flaubert said of his first story, the "Boule de Suif," which appeared in a miscellany called "Les Soirées de Médan": "I consider it a chef-d'oeuvre--that little story will stay, you may be sure." De Maupassant was for a few years connected with the Ministry of Marine and Public Instruction. Besides his almost perfect short stories, he has written plays and novels._ _De Maupassant describes himself admirably in one of his heroes, "armed with an eye that gathers images, attitudes, manners with the precision of a camera." His style is calm, robust, sober, clean-cut, impersonal. "The Bit of String" and "The Necklace" are two famous examples of De Maupassant at his best._ [Illustration] THE BIT OF STRING BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT Translated by Emar Soule. Copyright, 1899, by The Current Literature Publishing Company. Along all the roads leading to Goderville the peasants and their wives were going toward the town, for it was market-day. The men walked at an easy pace, the whole body thrown ahead at each movement of the long, crooked legs, men deformed by rude labor, by guiding the plow, which at once forces the right shoulder upward and twists the waist; by reaping, which spreads the knees, for solid footing; by all the patient and painful toil of the country. Their blue blouses, glossy with starch, as though varnished, ornamented at the neck and wrists by a simple pattern in white, swelled out round their bony chests, like captive balloons from which heads, arms, and legs were protruding.