These poems, overflowing with sensuality, where the hymn to the Earth describes the transports of physical possession, where the impatience of love expresses itself in loud melancholy appeals like the calls of animals in the spring nights, are valuable chiefly inasmuch as they reveal the creature of instinct, the fawn escaped from his native forests, that Maupassant was in his early youth.  But they add nothing to his glory.  They are the “rhymes of a prose writer” as Jules Lemaitre said.  To mould the expression of his thought according to the strictest laws, and to “narrow it down” to some extent, such was his aim.  Following the example of one of his comrades of Medan, being readily carried away by precision of style and the rhythm of sentences, by the imperious rule of the ballad, of the pantoum or the chant royal, Maupassant also desired to write in metrical lines.  However, he never liked this collection that he often regretted having published.  His encounters with prosody had left him with that monotonous weariness that the horseman and the fencer feel after a period in the riding school, or a bout with the foils.

Such, in very broad lines, is the story of Maupassant’s literary apprenticeship.

The day following the publication of “Boule de Suif,” his reputation began to grow rapidly.  The quality of his story was unrivalled, but at the same time it must be acknowledged that there were some who, for the sake of discussion, desired to place a young reputation in opposition to the triumphant brutality of Zola.

From this time on, Maupassant, at the solicitation of the entire press, set to work and wrote story after story.  His talent, free from all influences, his individuality, are not disputed for a moment.  With a quick step, steady and alert, he advanced to fame, a fame of which he himself was not aware, but which was so universal, that no contemporary author during his life ever experienced the same.  The “meteor” sent out its light and its rays were prolonged without limit, in article after article, volume on volume.

He was now rich and famous . . . .  He is esteemed all the more as they believe him to be rich and happy.  But they do not know that this young fellow with the sunburnt face, thick neck and salient muscles whom they invariably compare to a young bull at liberty, and whose love affairs they whisper, is ill, very ill.  At the very moment that success came to him, the malady that never afterwards left him came also, and, seated motionless at his side, gazed at him with its threatening countenance.  He suffered from terrible headaches, followed by nights of insomnia.  He had nervous attacks, which he soothed with narcotics and anesthetics, which he used freely.  His sight, which had troubled him at intervals, became affected, and a celebrated oculist spoke of abnormality, asymetry of the pupils.  The famous young man trembled in secret and was haunted by all kinds of terrors.