The Celebrated Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant: 100+ Classic Tales in One Edition. Guy de Maupassant

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      “I don’t care; order whatever is good.”

      After handing his coat to the waiter, he ordered dinner and champagne. The waiter looked at the young woman and smiled. He took the order and murmured:

      “Will Monsieur Paul have his champagne sweet or dry?”

      “Dry, very dry.”

      Henriette was pleased to hear that this man knew her husband’s name. They sat on the couch, side by side, and began to eat.

      Ten candles lighted the room and were reflected in the mirrors all around them, which seemed to increase the brilliancy a thousand-fold. Henriette drank glass after glass in order to keep up her courage, although she felt dizzy after the first few glasses. Paul, excited by the memories which returned to him, kept kissing his wife’s hands. His eyes were sparkling.

      She was feeling strangely excited in this new place, restless, pleased, a little guilty, but full of life. Two waiters, serious, silent, accustomed to seeing and forgetting everything, to entering the room only when it was necessary and to leaving it when they felt they were intruding, were silently flitting hither and thither.

      Toward the middle of the dinner, Henriette was well under the influence of champagne. She was prattling along fearlessly, her cheeks flushed, her eyes glistening.

      “Come, Paul; tell me everything.”

      “What, sweetheart?”

      “I don’t dare tell you.”

      “Go on!”

      “Have you loved many women before me?”

      He hesitated, a little perplexed, not knowing whether he should hide his adventures or boast of them.

      She continued:

      “Oh! please tell me. How many have you loved?”

      “A few.”

      “How many?”

      “I don’t know. How do you expect me to know such things?”

      “Haven’t you counted them?”

      “Of course not.”

      “Then you must have loved a good many!”

      “Perhaps.”

      “About how many? Just tell me about how many.”

      “But I don’t know, dearest. Some years a good many, and some years only a few.”

      “How many a year, did you say?”

      “Sometimes twenty or thirty, sometimes only four or five.”

      “Oh! that makes more than a hundred in all!”

      “Yes, just about.”

      “Oh! I think that is dreadful!”

      “Why dreadful?”

      “Because it’s dreadful when you think of it — all those women — and always — always the same thing. Oh! it’s dreadful, just the same — more than a hundred women!”

      He was surprised that she should think that dreadful, and answered, with the air of superiority which men take with women when they wish to make them understand that they have said something foolish:

      “That’s funny! If it is dreadful to have a hundred women, it’s dreadful to have one.”

      “Oh, no, not at all!”

      “Why not?”

      “Because with one woman you have a real bond of love which attaches you to her, while with a hundred women it’s not the same at all. There is no real love. I don’t understand how a man can associate with such women.”

      “But they are all right.”

      “No, they can’t be!”

      “Yes, they are!”

      “Oh, stop; you disgust me!”

      “But then, why did you ask me how many sweethearts I had had?”

      “Because — — “

      “That’s no reason!”

      “What were they-actresses, little shopgirls, or society women?”

      “A few of each.”

      “It must have been rather monotonous toward the last.”

      “Oh, no; it’s amusing to change.”

      She remained thoughtful, staring at her champagne glass. It was full — she drank it in one gulp; then putting it back on the table, she threw her arms around her husband’s neck and murmured in his ear:

      “Oh! how I love you, sweetheart! how I love you!”

      He threw his arms around her in a passionate embrace. A waiter, who was just entering, backed out, closing the door discreetly. In about five minutes the head waiter came back, solemn and dignified, bringing the fruit for dessert. She was once more holding between her fingers a full glass, and gazing into the amber liquid as though seeking unknown things. She murmured in a dreamy voice:

      “Yes, it must be fun!”

THE CAKE

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      Let us say that her name was Madame Anserre so as not to reveal her real name.

      She was one of those Parisian comets which leave, as it were, a trail of fire behind them. She wrote verses and novels; she had a poetic heart, and was rarely beautiful. She opened her doors to very few — only to exceptional people, those who are commonly described as princes of something or other. To be a visitor at her house constituted a claim, a genuine claim to intellect: at least this was the estimate set on her invitations. Her husband played the part of an obscure satellite. To be the husband of a comet is not an easy thing. This husband had, however, an original idea, that of creating a State within a State, of possessing a merit of his own, a merit of the second order, it is true; but he did, in fact, in this fashion, on the days when his wife held receptions, hold receptions also on his own account. He had his special set who appreciated him, listened to him, and bestowed on him more attention than they did on his brilliant partner.

      He had devoted himself to agriculture — to agriculture in the Chamber. There are in the same way generals in the Chamber — those who are born, who live, and who die, on the round leather chairs of the War Office, are all of this sort, are they not? Sailors in the Chamber, — viz., in the Admiralty, — colonizers in the Chamber, etc., etc. So he had studied agriculture, had studied it deeply, indeed, in its relations to the СКАЧАТЬ