“Hours passed away in this silent and sinister communion with the dead.  A pale light at length announced the dawn of a new day; then a red ray streamed in on the bed, making a bar of light across the coverlet and across her hands.  This was the hour she had so much loved.  The awakened birds began to sing in the trees.

“I opened the window to its fullest extent and drew back the curtains that the whole heavens might look in upon us, and, bending over the icy corpse, I took in my hands the mutilated head and slowly, without terror or disgust, I imprinted a kiss, a long kiss, upon those lips which had never before been kissed.”

Leon Chenal remained silent.  The women wept.  We heard on the box seat the Count d’Atraille blowing his nose from time to time.  The coachman alone had gone to sleep.  The horses, who no longer felt the sting of the whip, had slackened their pace and moved along slowly.  The drag, hardly advancing at all, seemed suddenly torpid, as if it had been freighted with sorrow.

[Miss Harriet appeared in Le Gaulois, July 9, 1883, under the title of Miss Hastings.  The story was later revised, enlarged; and partly reconstructed.  This is what De Maupassant wrote to Editor Havard March 15, 1884, in an unedited letter, in regard to the title of the story that was to give its name to the volume: 

   “I do not believe that Hastings is a bad name, inasmuch as it is
   known all over the world, and recalls the greatest facts in English
   history.  Besides, Hastings is as much a name as Duval is with us.

   “The name Cherbuliez selected, Miss Revel, is no more like an
   English name than like a Turkish name.  But here is another name as
   English as Hastings, and more euphonious; it is Miss Harriet. 
   I will ask you therefore to substitute Harriet for Hastings.”

It was in regard to this very tittle that De Maupassant had a disagreement with Audran and Boucheron director of the Bouffes Parisiens in October, 1890 They had given this title to an operetta about to be played at the Bouffes.  It ended however, by their ceding to De Maupassant, and the title of the operetta was changed to Miss Helyett.]

LITTLE LOUISE ROQUE

The former soldier, Mederic Rompel, familiarly called Mederic by the country folks, left the post office of Roily-le-Tors at the usual hour.  After passing through the village with his long stride, he cut across the meadows of Villaume and reached the bank of the Brindille, following the path along the water’s edge to the village of Carvelin, where he commenced to deliver his letters.  He walked quickly, following the course of the narrow river, which frothed, murmured and boiled in its grassy bed beneath an arch of willows.

Mederic went on without stopping, with only this thought in his mind:  “My first letter is for the Poivron family, then I have one for Monsieur Renardet; so I must cross the wood.”