“I was forbidden the house; I begged and prayed in vain; nothing could move the fair devotee, and I became ill from grief.  Well, last week, her cousin, Madame d’Arville, who is your cousin also, sent me word that she should like to see me, and when I called, she told me on what conditions I might obtain my pardon, and here they are.  I must bring her a relic, a real, authentic relic of some virgin and martyr, certified to be such by our Holy Father, the Pope, and I am going mad from embarrassment and anxiety.

“I will go to Rome, if needful, but I cannot call on the Pope unexpectedly, to tell him my stupid misadventure; and, besides, I doubt whether they allow private individuals to have relics.  Could not you give me an introduction to some cardinal, or even to some French prelate who possesses some remains of a female saint?  Or, perhaps, you may have the precious object she wants in your collection?

“Help me out of my difficulty, my dear Abbe, and I promise you that I will be converted ten years sooner than I otherwise should be!

“Madame d’Arville, who takes the matter seriously, said to me the other day: 

“‘Poor Gilberte will never marry.’

“My dear old schoolmate, will you allow your cousin to die the victim of a stupid piece of subterfuge on my part?  Pray prevent her from being virgin eleven thousand and one.

“Pardon me, I am unworthy, but I embrace you, and love you with all my heart.

“Your old friend,
               “Henri fontal.”

Original short stories, Vol. 4.

Guy de maupassant
original short stories
Translated by
Albert M. C. McMASTER, B.A. 
A. E. Henderson, B.A. 
Mme. Quesada and Others

VOLUME IV.

THE MORIBUND

The warm autumn sun was beating down on the farmyard.  Under the grass, which had been cropped close by the cows, the earth soaked by recent rains, was soft and sank in under the feet with a soggy noise, and the apple trees, loaded with apples, were dropping their pale green fruit in the dark green grass.

Four young heifers, tied in a line, were grazing and at times looking toward the house and lowing.  The fowls made a colored patch on the dung-heap before the stable, scratching, moving about and cackling, while two roosters crowed continually, digging worms for their hens, whom they were calling with a loud clucking.

The wooden gate opened and a man entered.  He might have been forty years old, but he looked at least sixty, wrinkled, bent, walking slowly, impeded by the weight of heavy wooden shoes full of straw.  His long arms hung down on both sides of his body.  When he got near the farm a yellow cur, tied at the foot of an enormous pear tree, beside a barrel which served as his kennel, began at first to wag his tail and then to bark for joy.  The man cried: