Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories

Une Vie, A Piece of String and
Other Stories
by Guy de
Maupassant

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other
Stories
by Guy de Maupassant #22 in our series by Guy de Maupassant
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****

Title: Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories
Author: Guy de Maupassant
Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7114] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on March 11,
2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNE VIE
***

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.
In fact, however, the beginnings had been much more simple, and they
had confined themselves, beneath the trees of Médan, to deciding on a
general title for the work. Zola had contributed the manuscript of the
"Attaque du Moulin," and it was at Maupassant's house that the five
young men gave in their contributions. Each one read his story,
Maupassant being the last. When he had finished Boule de Suif, with a
spontaneous impulse, with an emotion they never forgot, filled with
enthusiasm at this revelation, they all rose and, without superfluous
words, acclaimed him as a master.
He undertook to write the article for the Gaulois and, in coöperation
with his friends, he worded it in the terms with which we are familiar,
amplifying and embellishing it, yielding to an inborn taste for
mystification which his youth rendered excusable. The essential point,
he said, is to "unmoor" criticism.
It was unmoored. The