Produced by Thomas Berger, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. GUY DE MAUPASSANT UNE VIE A Piece of String And Other Stories Translated by Albert M. C. McMaster, B.A. A. E. Henderson, B.A. Mme. Quesada and Others * * * * * VOLUME I. * * * * * [Illustration: "JEANNE"] CONTENTS INTRODUCTION BY POL. NEVEUX UNE VIE (The History of a Heart) I. The Home by the Sea II. Happy Days III. M. de Lamare IV. Marriage and Disillusion V. Corsica and a New Life VI. Disenchantment VII. Jeanne's Discovery VIII. Maternity IX. Death of La Baronne X. Retribution XI. The Development of Paul XII. A New Home XIII. Jeanne in Paris XIV. Light at Eventide A VAGABOND THE FISHING HOLE THE SPASM IN THE WOOD MARTINE ALL OVER THE PARROT A PIECE OF STRING [Illustration: Guy de Maupassant] GUY DE MAUPASSANT A Study by Pol. Neveux "I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt." These words of Maupassant to José Maria de Heredia on the occasion of a memorable meeting are, in spite of their morbid solemnity, not an inexact summing up of the brief career during which, for ten years, the writer, by turns undaunted and sorrowful, with the fertility of a master hand produced poetry, novels, romances and travels, only to sink prematurely into the abyss of madness and death.... In the month of April, 1880, an article appeared in the "Le Gaulois" announcing the publication of the Soirées de Médan. It was signed by a name as yet unknown: Guy de Maupassant. After a juvenile diatribe against romanticism and a passionate attack on languorous literature, the writer extolled the study of real life, and announced the publication of the new work. It was picturesque and charming. In the quiet of evening, on an island in the Seine, beneath poplars instead of the Neapolitan cypresses dear to the friends of Boccaccio, amid the continuous murmur of the valley, and no longer to the sound of the Pyrennean streams that murmured a faint accompaniment to the tales of Marguerite's cavaliers, the master and his disciples took turns in narrating some striking or pathetic episode of the war. And the issue, in collaboration, of these tales in one volume, in which the master jostled elbows with his pupils, took on the appearance of a manifesto, the tone of a challenge, or the utterance of a creed.