It was not until he had won a very great reputation as a short story-teller, that De Maupassant attempted a long novel. He published only six single volume stories, all of which are included in the present edition. The first was _Une Vie_ (A Life), 1883, a very careful study of Norman manners, highly finished in the manner of Flaubert, whom he has styled "that irreproachable master whom I admire above all others." In certain directions, I do not think that De Maupassant has surpassed _Une Vie_, in fidelity to nature, in a Dutch exactitude of portraiture, in a certain distinction of tone; it was the history of an unhappy gentlewoman, doomed throughout life to be deceived, impoverished, disdained and overwhelmed. _Bel-Ami_, 1885, which succeeded this quiet and Quaker-colored book, was a much more vivid novel, an extremely vigorous picture of the rise in social prominence of a penniless fellow in Paris, without a brain or a heart, who depends wholly upon his impudence and his good looks. After 1885 De Maupassant published four novels--_Mont-Oriol_, 1887; _Pierre et Jean_, 1888; _Fort comme la Mort_ (As _Strong as Death_, or The Ruling Passion), 1889; and _Notre Coeur_ (Our Heart), 1890. Of these six remarkable books, the _Pierre et Jean_ is certainly the most finished and the most agreeable. In _Mont-Oriol_, a beautiful landscape of Auvergne mountain and bath enshrines a singularly pessimistic rendering of the adage "He loved and he rode away." Few of the author's thoughtful admirers will admit that in _Fort comme la Mort_ he has done justice to his powers. In _Notre Coeur_ he has taken up one of the psychological problems which have hitherto lain in the undisputed province of M. Bourget, and has shown how difficult it is in the musky atmosphere of fashionable Paris for two hearts to recover the Mayday freshness of their impulses, the spontaneous flow of their illusions; he displays himself here in a new light, less brutal than of old, more delicate and analytical. With regard to _Pierre et Jean_, it would be difficult to find words wherewith to describe it and its relation to the best English fiction more just or more felicitous than those in which Mr. Henry James welcomed its first appearance:--"_Pierre et Jean_ is, so far as my judgment goes, a faultless production.... It is the best of M. de Maupassant's novels, mainly because M. de Maupassant has never before been so clever. It is a pleasure to see a mature talent able to renew itself, strike another note, and appear still young.... The author's choice of a _milieu_, moreover, will serve to English readers as an example of how much more democratic contemporary French fiction is than that of his own country. The greater part of it--almost all the work of Zola and of Daudet, the list of Flaubert's novels, and the best of those of the brothers De Goncourt--treat of that vast, dim section of society, which, lying between those luxurious walks on whose behalf there are