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 THE PORTRAITS OF

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

his master, Flaubert, who exercised such a powerful influence on his ideas and his manner of life, Guy de Maupassant was more or less hostile to portraiture, or rather to the publicity of portraiture. He thought that an author's work was all that concerned the multitude, that curiosity about a writer's appearance on the part of a reader was indiscreet and profane to a certain extent, and quite unworthy of serious consideration.

"I have made it a fixed rule," wrote Maupassant about 1885, in a letter to the papers (of which we give a fac-simile), "never to allow my portrait