It is in fact more difficult to bend a sentence to one's will and make it express everything--even what it does not say, to fill it full of implications of covert and inexplicit suggestions, than to invent new expressions, or seek out in old and forgotten books all those which have fallen into disuse and lost their meaning, so that to us they are as a dead language. The French tongue, to be sure, is a pure stream, which affected writers never have and never can trouble. Each age has flung into the limpid waters its pretentious archaisms and euphuisms, but nothing has remained on the surface to perpetuate these futile attempts and impotent efforts. It is the nature of the language to be clear, logical, and vigorous. It does not lend itself to weakness, obscurity, or corruption. Those who describe without duly heeding abstract terms, those who make rain and hail fall on the _cleanliness_ of the window panes, may throw stones at the simplicity of their brothers of the pen. The stones may indeed hit their brothers, who have a body, but will never hurt simplicity--which has none. GUY DE MAUPASSANT. LA GUILLETTE, ETRETAT, September, 1887. PIERRE ET JEAN CHAPTER I "Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea. Madame Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Madame Rosemilly, who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her head to look at her husband, said: "Well, well! Gerome." And the old fellow replied in a fury: "They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too late." His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and Jean remarked: "You are not very polite to our guest, father." M. Roland was abashed, and apologized. "I beg your pardon, Madame Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish." Madame Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at the wide horizon of cliff and sea. "You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured.