“Where am I?”

“Where are you, you dirty scamp?  You are drunk.  Take your rotten carcass out of here as quick as you can—­and lose no time about it!”

He wanted to get up.  He found that he was in no condition to do so.  His clothes had disappeared.  He blurted out: 

“Madame, I——­Then he remembered.  What was he to do?  He asked: 

“Did Monsieur Romantin come back?”

The doorkeeper shouted: 

“Will you take your dirty carcass out of this, so that he at any rate may not catch you here?”

M. Saval said, in a state of confusion: 

“I haven’t got my clothes; they have been taken away from me.”

He had to wait, to explain his situation, give notice to his friends, and borrow some money to buy clothes.  He did not leave Paris till evening.  And when people talk about music to him in his beautiful drawing-room in Vernon, he declares with an air of authority that painting is a very inferior art.

Original short stories, Vol. 6.

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

VOLUME VI.

THAT COSTLY RIDE

The household lived frugally on the meager income derived from the husband’s insignificant appointments.  Two children had been born of the marriage, and the earlier condition of the strictest economy had become one of quiet, concealed, shamefaced misery, the poverty of a noble family—­which in spite of misfortune never forgets its rank.

Hector de Gribelin had been educated in the provinces, under the paternal roof, by an aged priest.  His people were not rich, but they managed to live and to keep up appearances.

At twenty years of age they tried to find him a position, and he entered the Ministry of Marine as a clerk at sixty pounds a year.  He foundered on the rock of life like all those who have not been early prepared for its rude struggles, who look at life through a mist, who do not know how to protect themselves, whose special aptitudes and faculties have not been developed from childhood, whose early training has not developed the rough energy needed for the battle of life or furnished them with tool or weapon.

His first three years of office work were a martyrdom.

He had, however, renewed the acquaintance of a few friends of his family —­elderly people, far behind the times, and poor like himself, who lived in aristocratic streets, the gloomy thoroughfares of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; and he had created a social circle for himself.

Strangers to modern life, humble yet proud, these needy aristocrats lived in the upper stories of sleepy, old-world houses.  From top to bottom of their dwellings the tenants were titled, but money seemed just as scarce on the ground floor as in the attics.