Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/524

500 this cannot be. It is only the tempting vision of an oasis, of which we know that it does not exist, and that desert sand is all around.

De Maupassant attained that tragic moment in life when the struggle began between the falsehood of the life about him and the true life of which he began to be conscious. The first throes of spiritual birth had already commenced in him.

And it is these anguishes of birth that he expressed in his best work, especially in his short stories.

Had it been his, not to die in the anguish of birth, but to be born, he would have given us great instructive works; but, as it is, what he has given us in his birth struggle is much. Let us therefore be thankful to this powerful, truthful man for what he has given us.