


Produced by David Widger





ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, VOLUME 12 (of 13)


By Guy De Maupassant


Translated by

     ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
     A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
     MME. QUESADA and Others



VOLUME XII.



     THE CHILD
     A COUNTRY EXCURSION
     ROSE
     ROSALIE PRUDENT
     REGRET
     A SISTER'S CONFESSION
     COCO
     A DEAD WOMAN'S SECRET
     A HUMBLE DRAMA
     MADEMOISELLE COCOTTE
     THE CORSICAN BANDIT
     THE GRAVE




THE CHILD

Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife
devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during
their entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple,
sincere, without suspicion or malice.

He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was
making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business,
and he did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might have
accepted him for anything else but himself.

She made him happy. She was everything to him; he only thought of her,
looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes. During meals he would
make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his eyes from
the beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the water in
the salt-cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating:

"You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy."

She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look away,
as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try to make
him talk about something else; but he would take her hand under the
table and he would hold it in his, whispering:

"My little Jeanne, my darling little Jeanne!"

She sometimes