Part 1

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

In the plain text version text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_), small caps are represented in upper case as in SMALL CAPS and words in bold are represented as in =bold=.

A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For the words with both variants present the one more used has been kept.

Obvious punctuation and other printing errors have been corrected.

The cover art included with this eBook was modified by the transcriber and is granted to the public domain.

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[Illustration: =Guy de Maupassant=]

SHORT STORY CLASSICS

(FOREIGN)

VOLUME FIVE FRENCH II

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EDITED BY William Patten

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

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P. F. COLLIER & SON NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT 1907 BY P. F. COLLIER & SON

The use of the copyrighted translations in this collection has been authorized by the authors or their representatives. The translations made especially for this collection are covered by the general copyright

CONTENTS--VOLUME V

PAGE

LA BRETONNE ANDRÉ THEURIET 1339

WHICH WAS THE MADMAN? EDMOND ABOUT 1349

THE GRAND MARRIAGE LUDOVIC HALÉVY 1379

THE ACCURSED HOUSE ÉMILE GABORIAU 1415

THE FÊTE AT COQUEVILLE ÉMILE ZOLA 1427

THE LOST CHILD FRANÇOIS COPPÉE 1471

PUTOIS ANATOLE FRANCE 1495

SAC-AU-DOS JORIS KARL HUYSMANS 1515

"BONJOUR, MONSIEUR" JEAN RICHEPIN 1559

THE BIT OF STRING GUY DE MAUPASSANT 1571

THE NECKLACE GUY DE MAUPASSANT 1581

THE WALL OPPOSITE PIERRE LOTI 1595

THE ANCESTOR PAUL BOURGET 1605

WHEN HE WAS A LITTLE BOY HENRI LAVEDAN 1639

A GENTLEMAN FINDS A WATCH GEORGES COURTELINE 1651

A YOUNG GIRL'S DIARY MARCEL PRÉVOST 1659

THE SIGN OF THE KEY AND THE CROSS HENRI DE RÉGNIER 1671

THE TELEGRAPH OPERATOR ALPHONSE ALLAIS 1685

LA BRETONNE BY CLAUDE ADHÉMAR ANDRÉ THEURIET

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_André Theuriet, born at Marly-le-Roi in 1833, went to Paris to study law, and finally became head of the Government Department of Finance. In 1857 appeared the charming collection of verses called "Chemin des Bois," which was crowned by the Academy, and which earned for the author the title of "Song Sparrow" from the great critic Sainte-Beuve._

_Theuriet received, in 1890, the Vitel prize from the Academy for general literary excellence, and was admitted to that body in 1896. His style is sane, fresh, limpid, delicate, and rich in color. He is a lover of nature with a profound feeling for the peasant._

_Theuriet's standing is well assured when we consider that such men as Jules Claretie, Adolph Brisson, François Coppée, all contributed appreciations of Theuriet in "Les Annales Politiques et Littéraires," soon after his death, on April 23, 1907._

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LA BRETONNE BY ANDRÉ THEURIET

Translated by B. C. Waggener. Copyright, 1891, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

One November evening, the eve of Sainte-Catherine's Day, the gate of the Auberive prison turned upon its hinges to allow to pass out a woman of some thirty years, clad in a faded woolen gown and coiffed in a linen cap that framed in a singular fashion a face pale and puffed by that sickly-hued fat which develops on prison regimen. She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated, and whom her companions of detention called La Bretonne.

Condemned for infanticide, it was exactly, day for day, six years ago that the prison van had brought her to the Centrale. Now, in her former garb, and with her small stock of money received from the clerk in her pocket, she found herself free and with her roadpass stamped for Langres.

The courier for Langres, however, had long since gone. Cowed and awkward, she took her way stumblingly toward the chief inn of the borough, and with trembling voice asked shelter for the night. But the inn was crowded, and the _aubergiste_, who did not care to harbor "one of those birds from over yonder," counseled her to push on to the _cabaret_ at the far end of the village.

La Bretonne passed on, and, more trembling and awkward than ever, knocked at the door of that cabaret, which, properly speaking, was but a cantine for laborers. The cabaretière also eyed her askance, scenting doubtless a "discharged" from the Centrale, and finally refused her on the plea that she had no bed to give her.

La Bretonne dared not insist, but with bowed head pursued her way, while at the bottom of her soul rose and grew a dull hatred for that world which thus repulsed her.

She had no other resource than to gain Langres afoot.

Toward the end of November, night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped in darkness, on a grayish road that ran between two divisions of the forest, and where the north wind whistled fiercely, choked her with dust, and pelted her with dead leaves.

After six years of sedentary and recluse life her legs were stiff, the muscles knotted and her feet, accustomed to sabots, pinched and bruised by her new slippers. At the end of a league she felt them blistered and herself exhausted. She dropped upon a pile of stones by the wayside, shivering and asking herself if she was going to be forced to perish of cold and hunger in this black night, under this icy breeze, which froze her to the marrow.

All at once, in the solitude of the road, she seemed to hear the droning notes of a voice singing. She listened and distinguished the air of one of those caressing and monotonous chants with which one soothes young children.

She was not alone, then!

She struggled to her feet and in the direction from which the voice came, and there, at the turn of a crossroad, perceived a reddish light streaming through the branches. Five minutes later she was before a mud-walled hovel, whose roof, covered by squares of sod, leaned again the rock, and whose window had allowed to pass that beckoning ray.

With anxious heart she decided to knock.

The chant ceased instantly and a woman opened the door, a peasant woman, no older than La Bretonne herself, but faded and aged by work. Her bodice, torn in places, displayed the skin tanned and dirty; her red hair escaped disheveled from under a soiled stuff cap, and her gray eyes regarded with amazement the stranger whose face had in it something of touching loneliness.

"Good evening!" said she, lifting yet higher the sputtering lamp in her hand; "what do you desire?"

"I am unable to go on," murmured La Bretonne, in a voice broken by a sob; "the city is far, and if you will lodge me for the night, you will do me a service.... I have money; I will pay you for the trouble."

"Enter," replied the other, after a moment's hesitancy; "but why," continued she, in a tone more curious than suspicious, "did you not sleep at Auberive?"

"They would not give me a lodging," lowering her blue eyes and taken with a sudden scruple, "be--because, see you, I come from the Maison Centrale."

"So! the Maison Centrale! but no matter--enter--I fear nothing, having known only misery. Moreover, I've a conscience against turning a Christian from the door on a night like this. I'll give you a bed and a slice of cheese."

And she pulled from the eaves some bundles of dried heather and spread them as a pallet in the corner by the fire.

"Do you live here alone?" demanded La Bretonne, timidly.

"Yes, with my _gâchette_, going on seven years now. I earn our living by working in the wood."

"Your man, then, is dead?"

"Yes," said the other bruskly, "the _gâchette_ has no father. Briefly, to each his sorrow! But come, behold your straw, and two or three potatoes left from supper. It is all I can offer you--"

She was called by a childish voice coming from a dark nook, separated from the room by a board partition.

"Good night!" she repeated, "the little one cries; I must go, but sleep you well!"

And taking up the lamp she passed into the closet, leaving La Bretonne crouched alone in the darkness.

Stretched upon her heather, after she had eaten her supper, she strove to close her eyes, but sleep would not come to her. Through the thin partition she heard the mother still softly talking to the child, whom the arrival of a stranger had wakened, and who did not wish to go to sleep again.

The mother soothed and fondled it with words of endearment that somehow strangely disturbed La Bretonne. That outburst of simple tenderness seemed to waken a confused maternal instinct in the soul of that girl condemned in the past for having stifled her new-born.

"If things had not gone so badly with me," thought La Bretonne, sorrowfully, "_it_ would have been the same age as this little one here."

At that thought and at the sound of that childish voice, a sickening shudder seemed to shake her very vitals; something soft and tender to spring up in that soured heart, and an increasing need for the relief of tears.

"But come, come, my little one," the mother cried, "to sleep you must go! And if you are good and do as I say, to-morrow I'll take you to the Sainte-Catherine's Fair!"

"The _fête_ of little children, mama; the _fête_ of little children, you mean?"

"Yes, my angel, of little children."

"And the day when the good Sainte-Catherine brings playthings to the babies, mama?"

"Sometimes--yes."

"Then why doesn't she bring playthings to our house, mama?"

"We live too far away, perhaps; and then--we are too poor."

"She brings them only to rich babies, then, mama? But why, mama, why, I say? I should love to see playthings!"

"Eh, bien! some day you may, if you are very good--to-night, perhaps, if you are wise and go to sleep soon."

"I will, then, mama, I will right away, so she can bring them to-morrow."

The little voice ceased; there was a long silence; then a long breath, even and light!

The child slept at last--the mother also.

La Bretonne, only, did not sleep! An emotion, at once poignant and tender, tore at her heart, and she thought more than ever of that other little one, whom they said she had killed.... This lasted till dawn.

Mother and child slept still, but La Bretonne was up and out, gliding hurriedly and furtively in the direction of Auberive and slackening her pace only when the first houses of the village came in sight.

Soon she had reached and was traversing its only street, walking slowly now and scanning with all her eyes the signs of the shops. One at last seemed to fix her attention. She knocked at the shutter and presently it opened. A mercer's shop, apparently, but also with some toys and playthings in the window--poor, pitiful trifles, a pasteboard doll, a Noah's ark, a woolly, stiff-legged little sheep!

To the astonishment of the merchant, La Bretonne purchased them all, paid, and went out. She had resumed the road to the hovel in the wood, when suddenly a hand fell heavily upon her shoulder, and she was face to face with a brigadier of _gendarmerie_.

The unhappy one had forgotten that it was forbidden to liberated prisoners to loiter near the Maison Centrale.

"Instead of vagabondizing here, you should already be at Langres," said the brigadier, gruffly. "Come, march, be off with you! To the road, to the road, I say!"

She sought to explain. Pains lost. At once a passing cart was pressed into service, La Bretonne bundled into it, and in charge of a _gendarme_ once more en route for Langres.

The cart jolted lumberingly over the frozen ruts. The poor La Bretonne clutched with a heartbroken air her bundle of playthings in her freezing fingers.

All at once, at a turn of the road, she recognized the cross path that led through the wood. Her heart leaped and she besought the _gendarme_ to stop only one moment. She had a commission for La Fleuriotte, the woman that lived there!

She supplicated with so much fervor that the _gendarme_, a good man at heart, allowed himself to be persuaded. They stopped, tied the horse to a tree, and ascended the pathway.

Before the door La Fleuriotte hewed the gathered wood into the required fagots. On seeing her visitor return, accompanied by a _gendarme_, she stood open-mouthed and with arms hanging.

"Hist!" said La Bretonne, "hist! the little one--does it sleep still?"

"Yes--but--"

"Then, here, these playthings, lay them on the bed and tell her Sainte-Catherine brought them. I returned to Auberive for them; but it seems I had no right to do it, and they are taking me now to Langres."

"Holy Mother of God!" cried the amazed La Fleuriotte.

"Hist! be still, I say!"

And drawing near the bed herself, followed always by her escort, La Bretonne scattered upon the coverlet the doll, the Noah's ark, and the stiff-legged, woolly, and somewhat grimy little lamb, bent the bare arm of the child till it clasped the latter, then turned with a smile.

"Now," said she, addressing the _gendarme_, vigorously rubbing his eyes with the cuff of his jacket--the frost, it seemed, had gotten into them--"I am ready: we can go!"

WHICH WAS THE MADMAN? BY EDMOND FRANÇOIS VALENTIN ABOUT

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_Edmond About, born at Dieuze in 1828, author of a play, "Gaetana," the noisy failure of which crushed for a long time his dramatic aspiration, turned to the writing of novels, such as "The Marriages of Paris," "Madelon," and "The Romish Question," the latter a book which attacked with great venom and vivacity the temporal power of the Pope. "The Man of the Old School" is a general title under which he collected separate stories, studies of social reform, such as "The Romance of an Honest Man," at one time an eloquent manual of patriotism. About has also written studies in politics and finance, besides art criticisms, more brilliant than profound._

_About's style is distinguished by its spirit and lucidity. He knows how to tell a story, and has great respect for his mother tongue. He was elected to the Academy in 1884, but died in 1885 without delivering his thesis._

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WHICH WAS THE MADMAN? THE STORY OF A STRANGE CASE

BY EDMOND ABOUT

Copyright, 1903, by The Current Literature Publishing Company.

I

One might pass Dr. Auvray's house twenty times without suspecting the miracles that are wrought there. It is a modest establishment near the end of Montaigne Avenue, between Prince Soltikoff's Gothic palace and the gymnasium. The unpretentious iron gates open into a small garden, filled with lilacs and rosebushes. The porter's lodge is on the left side of the gateway; the wing containing the doctor's office and the apartments of his wife and daughter are on the right; while the main building stands with its back to the street and its south windows overlook a small grove of horsechestnuts and lindens.

It is there that the doctor treats, and generally cures, cases of mental aberration. I would not introduce you into his house, however, if you incurred any risk of meeting frenzied lunatics or hopeless imbeciles. You will be spared all such harrowing sights. Dr. Auvray is a specialist, and treats cases of monomania only. He is an extremely kind-hearted man, endowed with plenty of shrewdness and good sense; a true philosopher, an untiring student, and an enthusiastic follower of the famous Esquirol.

Having come into possession of a small fortune soon after the completion of his medical course, he married, and founded the establishment which we have described. Had there been a spark of charlatanism in his composition, he could easily have amassed a fortune, but he had been content to merely earn a living. He shunned notoriety, and when he effected a wonderful cure, he never proclaimed it upon the housetops. His very enviable reputation had been acquired without any effort on his part, and almost against his will. Would you have a proof of this? Well, his treatise on monomania, published by Baillière in 1852, has passed through six editions, though the author has never sent a single copy to the newspapers. Modesty is a good thing, certainly, but one may carry it too far. Mademoiselle Auvray will have a dowry of only twenty thousand francs, and she will be twenty-two in April.

About a month ago a hired coupé stopped in front of Dr. Auvray's door, from which two men alighted and entered the office. The servant asked them to be seated, and await his master's return.

One of the visitors was about fifty years of age, a tall, stout, dark-complexioned but ruddy-faced man, rather ungainly in figure and appearance. He had thick, stubby hands and enormous thumbs. Picture a laboring man, dressed in his employer's clothes, and you have M. Morlot.

His nephew, Francis Thomas, is a young man, about twenty-three years old; but it is very difficult to describe him, as there is nothing distinctive either in his manner or appearance. He is neither tall nor short, handsome nor ugly, stout nor thin--in short, he is commonplace and mediocre in every respect, with chestnut hair, and of an extremely retiring disposition, manner and attire. When he entered Dr. Auvray's office, he seemed to be greatly excited. He walked wildly to and fro, as if unable to remain in one place; looked at twenty different things in the same instant, and would certainly have handled them all if his hands had not been tied.

"Compose yourself, my dear Francis," said his uncle, soothingly. "What I am doing is for your own good. You will be perfectly comfortable and happy here, and the doctor is sure to cure you."

"I am not sick. There is nothing whatever the matter with me. Why have you tied my hands?"

"Because you would have thrown me out of the window, if I had not. You are not in your right mind, my poor boy, but Dr. Auvray will soon make you well again."

"I am as sane as you are, uncle; and I can't imagine what you mean. My mind is perfectly clear and my memory excellent. Shall I recite some poetry to you, or construe some Latin? I see there is a Tacitus here in the bookcase. Or, if you prefer, I will solve a problem in algebra or geometry. You don't desire it? Very well, then listen while I tell you what you have been doing this morning.

"You came to my room at eight o'clock, not to wake me, for I was not asleep, but to get me out of bed. I dressed myself without any assistance from Germain. You asked me to accompany you to Dr. Auvray's; I refused; you insisted; then Germain aided you in tying my hands. I shall dismiss him this evening. I owe him thirteen days' wages; that is to say, thirteen francs, as I promised to pay him thirty francs a month. You, too, owe him something, as you are the cause of his losing his New Year's gift. Isn't this a tolerably clear statement of the facts? Do you still intend to try to make me out a lunatic? Ah, my dear uncle, let your better nature assert itself. Remember that my mother was your sister. What would my poor mother say if she saw me here? I bear you no ill-will, and everything can be amicably arranged. You have a daughter."

"Ah, there it is again. You must certainly see that you are not in your right mind. I have a daughter--I? Why, I am a bachelor, as you know perfectly well."

"You have a daughter--" repeated Francis, mechanically.

"My poor nephew, listen to me a moment. Have you a cousin?"

"A cousin? No, I have no cousin. Oh, you won't catch me there. I have no cousin, either male or female."

"But I am your uncle, am I not?"

"Yes; you are my uncle, of course, though you seem to have forgotten the fact this morning."

"Then if I had a daughter, she would be your cousin; but as you have no cousin, I can have no daughter."

"You are right, of course. I had the pleasure of meeting her at Ems last summer with her mother; I love her; I have reason to believe that she is not indifferent to me, and I have the honor to ask you for her hand in marriage."

"Whose hand, may I ask?"

"Your daughter's hand."

"Just hear him," Morlot said to himself. "Dr. Auvray must certainly be very clever if he succeeds in curing him. I am willing to pay him six thousand francs a year for board and treatment. Six thousand francs from thirty thousand leaves twenty-four thousand. How rich I shall be! Poor Francis!"

He seated himself again, and picked up a book that chanced to be lying on a table near him.

"Calm yourself," he said soothingly, "and I will read you something. Try to listen. It may quiet you."

Opening the volume, he read as follows:

"'Monomania is opinionativeness on one subject; a persistent clinging to one idea; the supreme ascendency of a single passion. It has its origin in the heart. To cure the malady, the cause must be ascertained and removed. It arises generally from love, fear, vanity, overweening ambition or remorse, and betrays itself by the same symptoms as any other passion; sometimes by boisterousness, gaiety, and garrulousness; sometimes by extreme timidity, melancholy, and silence.'"

As M. Morlot read on, Francis became more quiet, and at last appeared to fall into a peaceful slumber.

"Bravo!" thought the uncle, "here is a triumph of medical skill already. It has put to sleep a man who was neither hungry nor sleepy!"

Francis was not asleep, but he was feigning sleep to perfection. His head drooped lower and lower, and he regulated his heavy breathing with mathematical exactness. Uncle Morlot was completely deceived. He went on reading for some time in more and more subdued tones; then he yawned; then he stopped reading; then he let the book drop from his hands and closed his eyes, and in another minute he was sound asleep, to the intense delight of his nephew, who was watching him maliciously out of the corner of his eye.

Francis began operations by scraping his chair on the uncarpeted floor, but M. Morlot moved no more than a post. Francis then tramped noisily up and down the room, but his uncle snored the louder. Then the nephew approached the doctor's desk, picked up an eraser that was lying there, and with it finally succeeded in cutting the rope that bound his hands. On regaining his liberty he uttered a smothered exclamation of joy; then he cautiously approached his uncle. In two minutes, M. Morlot himself was securely bound, but it had been done so gently and so adroitly that his slumbers had not been disturbed in the least.

Francis stood admiring his work for a moment; then he stooped and picked up the book that had fallen to the floor. It was Dr. Auvray's treatise on monomania. He carried it off into a corner of the room and began to read it with much apparent interest, while awaiting the doctor's coming.

II

It is necessary to revert briefly to the antecedents of this uncle and nephew. Francis Thomas was the only son of a former toy-merchant, on the Rue de Saumon. The toy trade is an excellent business, about one hundred per cent profit being realized on most of the articles; consequently, since his father's death, Francis had been enjoying that ease generally known as honest ease; possibly because it enables one to live without stooping to sordid acts; possibly, too, because it enables one to keep one's friends honest, also. In short, he had an income of thirty thousand francs a year.