The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5: Une Vie and Other StoriesMaupassant, Guy de
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The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5: Une Vie and Other Stories
Maupassant, Guy de
French fiction -- Translations into English; Short stories, French -- Translations into English
As she went from one thing to another, and remembered little incidents
in connection with them, her heart felt as if it would break. "Why, this
is the china cup I cracked a few days before I was married, and here is
mamma's little lantern, and the cane papa broke trying to open the
wooden gate the rain had swollen."
Besides all these familiar objects there were a great many things she
had never seen before, which had belonged to her grandparents or her
great-grandparents. Covered with dust they looked like sad, forsaken
exiles from another century, their history and adventures for ever lost,
for there was no one living now who had known those who had chosen,
bought and treasured them, or who had seen the hands which had so often
touched them or the eyes which had found such pleasure in looking at
them. Jeanne touched them, and turned them about, her fingers leaving
their traces on the thick dust; and she stayed for a long, long time
amidst these old things, in the garret which was dimly lighted by a
little skylight.
She tried to find other things with associations to them, and very
carefully she examined some three-legged chairs, a copper warming-pan, a
dented foot-warmer (which she thought she remembered) and all the other
worn-out household utensils. Then she put all the things she thought she
should like to take away together, and going downstairs, sent Rosalie up
to fetch them. The latter indignantly refused to bring down "such
rubbish," but Jeanne, though she hardly ever showed any will of her own,
now would have her own way this time, and the servant had to obey.
One morning young Denis Lecoq (Julien's son) came, with his cart, to
take way the first lot of things, and Rosalie went off with him to look
after the unloading, and to see that the furniture was put into the
right rooms.
When she was alone Jeanne began to visit every room in the chateau, and
to kiss in a transport of passionate sorrow and regret everything that
she was forced to leave behind her--the big white birds in the
drawing-room tapestry, the old candlesticks, anything and everything
that came in her way. She went from room to room, half mad with grief,
and the tears streaming from her eyes, and, when she had gone all over
the house, she went out to "say good-bye" to the sea. It was the end of
September, and the dull yellowish waves stretched away as far as the eye
could reach, under the lowering gray sky which hung over the world. For
a long, long while, Jeanne stood on the cliff, her thoughts running on
all her sorrows and troubles, and it was not till night drew on that she
went indoors. In that day she had gone through as much suffering as she
had ever passed through in her greatest griefs.
Rosalie had returned enchanted with the new house, "which was much
livelier than this big barn of a place that was not even on a main
road," but her mistress wept the whole evening.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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