“Where am I?”
“Where are you, you dirty scamp? You are
drunk. Take your rotten carcass out of here as
quick as you can—and lose no time about
it!”
He wanted to get up. He found that he was in
no condition to do so. His clothes had disappeared.
He blurted out:
“Madame, I——Then he remembered.
What was he to do? He asked:
“Did Monsieur Romantin come back?”
The doorkeeper shouted:
“Will you take your dirty carcass out of this,
so that he at any rate may not catch you here?”
M. Saval said, in a state of confusion:
“I haven’t got my clothes; they have been
taken away from me.”
He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice
to his friends, and borrow some money to buy clothes.
He did not leave Paris till evening. And when
people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room
in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that
painting is a very inferior art.
Original short stories, Vol. 6.
Guy de maupassant
original short stories
Translated by
Albert M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. Henderson, B.A.
Mme. Quesada and Others
THAT COSTLY RIDE
The household lived frugally on the meager income
derived from the husband’s insignificant appointments.
Two children had been born of the marriage, and the
earlier condition of the strictest economy had become
one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty
of a noble family—which in spite of misfortune
never forgets its rank.
Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces,
under the paternal roof, by an aged priest. His
people were not rich, but they managed to live and
to keep up appearances.
At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position,
and he entered the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at
sixty pounds a year. He foundered on the rock
of life like all those who have not been early prepared
for its rude struggles, who look at life through a
mist, who do not know how to protect themselves, whose
special aptitudes and faculties have not been developed
from childhood, whose early training has not developed
the rough energy needed for the battle of life or
furnished them with tool or weapon.
His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.
He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few
friends of his family —elderly people,
far behind the times, and poor like himself, who lived
in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of
the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and he had created a social
circle for himself.
Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these
needy aristocrats lived in the upper stories of sleepy,
old-world houses. From top to bottom of their
dwellings the tenants were titled, but money seemed
just as scarce on the ground floor as in the attics.
