Page:Pierre and Jean - Clara Bell - 1902.djvu/39

 to him? Why yes, since this man had had no other love, since he had remained faithful to her when she was far away and growing old. Why yes, since he had left all his fortune to his son—their son! And Pierre started to his feet, quivering with such rage that he longed to kill some one. With his arm outstretched, his hand wide open, he wanted to hit, to bruise, to smash, to strangle! Whom? Every one; his father, his brother, the dead man, his mother!

To assert that a man who could write thus neither felt himself nor could make others feel, is palpably absurd. It would be difficult to find a more poignant passage, instinct not with pathos but with tragedy, in the fiction of any country or time.

The healthier side of Maupassant's strong nature developed itself in a love of outdoor pursuits. There is not a great deal of sport in the stories, and in one instance his natural history seems to be at fault. But his delight in scenery was physical rather than æsthetic. He compels us to see with his eyes the rather melancholy quietude of the wide Norman plains, the dreary marshes where the wild-fowl hide, and the silent depths of the woodlands. But scenery appealed to him most xxxi