Complete Original Short Stories of Guy De Maupassant eBook

No one looked at her, no one thought of her.  She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.  Then she remembered her big basket full of the good things they had so greedily devoured:  the two chickens coated in jelly, the pies, the pears, the four bottles of claret; and her fury broke forth like a cord that is overstrained, and she was on the verge of tears.  She made terrible efforts at self-control, drew herself up, swallowed the sobs which choked her; but the tears rose nevertheless, shone at the brink of her eyelids, and soon two heavy drops coursed slowly down her cheeks.  Others followed more quickly, like water filtering from a rock, and fell, one after another, on her rounded bosom.  She sat upright, with a fixed expression, her face pale and rigid, hoping desperately that no one saw her give way.

But the countess noticed that she was weeping, and with a sign drew her husband’s attention to the fact.  He shrugged his shoulders, as if to say:  “Well, what of it?  It’s not my fault.”  Madame Loiseau chuckled triumphantly, and murmured: 

“She’s weeping for shame.”

The two nuns had betaken themselves once more to their prayers, first wrapping the remainder of their sausage in paper: 

Then Cornudet, who was digesting his eggs, stretched his long legs under the opposite seat, threw himself back, folded his arms, smiled like a man who had just thought of a good joke, and began to whistle the Marseillaise.

The faces of his neighbors clouded; the popular air evidently did not find favor with them; they grew nervous and irritable, and seemed ready to howl as a dog does at the sound of a barrel-organ.  Cornudet saw the discomfort he was creating, and whistled the louder; sometimes he even hummed the words: 

     Amour sacre de la patrie,
     Conduis, soutiens, nos bras vengeurs,
     Liberte, liberte cherie,
     Combats avec tes defenseurs!

The coach progressed more swiftly, the snow being harder now; and all the way to Dieppe, during the long, dreary hours of the journey, first in the gathering dusk, then in the thick darkness, raising his voice above the rumbling of the vehicle, Cornudet continued with fierce obstinacy his vengeful and monotonous whistling, forcing his weary and exasperated-hearers to follow the song from end to end, to recall every word of every line, as each was repeated over and over again with untiring persistency.

And Boule de Suif still wept, and sometimes a sob she could not restrain was heard in the darkness between two verses of the song.

TWO FRIENDS

Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine.  Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce.  People were eating anything they could get.

As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession and idler for the nonce, was strolling along the boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers pockets and stomach empty, he suddenly came face to face with an acquaintance—­Monsieur Sauvage, a fishing chum.