“I went out with a spade, a lantern and a hammer; I jumped over the cemetery wall and I found the grave, which had not yet been closed entirely; I uncovered the coffin and took up a board.  An abominable odor, the stench of putrefaction, greeted my nostrils.  Oh, her bed perfumed with orris!

“Yet I opened the coffin, and, holding my lighted lantern down into it I saw her.  Her face was blue, swollen, frightful.  A black liquid had oozed out of her mouth.

“She!  That was she!  Horror seized me.  But I stretched out my arm to draw this monstrous face toward me.  And then I was caught.

“All night I have retained the foul odor of this putrid body, the odor of my well beloved, as one retains the perfume of a woman after a love embrace.

“Do with me what you will.”

A strange silence seemed to oppress the room.  They seemed to be waiting for something more.  The jury retired to deliberate.

When they came back a few minutes later the accused showed no fear and did not even seem to think.

The president announced with the usual formalities that his judges declared him to be not guilty.

He did not move and the room applauded.

   The Grave appeared in Gil Blas, July 29, 1883, under the signature
   of “Maufrigneuse.”

Original short stories, Vol. 13.

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

VOLUME XIII.

OLD JUDAS

This entire stretch of country was amazing; it was characterized by a grandeur that was almost religious, and yet it had an air of sinister desolation.

A great, wild lake, filled with stagnant, black water, in which thousands of reeds were waving to and fro, lay in the midst of a vast circle of naked hills, where nothing grew but broom, or here and there an oak curiously twisted by the wind.

Just one house stood on the banks of that dark lake, a small, low house inhabited by Uncle Joseph, an old boatman, who lived on what he could make by his fishing.  Once a week he carried the fish he caught into the surrounding villages, returning with the few provisions that he needed for his sustenance.

I went to see this old hermit, who offered to take me with him to his nets, and I accepted.

His boat was old, worm-eaten and clumsy, and the skinny old man rowed with a gentle and monotonous stroke that was soothing to the soul, already oppressed by the sadness of the land round about.

It seemed to me as if I were transported to olden times, in the midst of that ancient country, in that primitive boat, which was propelled by a man of another age.

He took up his nets and threw the fish into the bottom of the boat, as the fishermen of the Bible might have done.  Then he took me down to the end of the lake, where I suddenly perceived a ruin on the other side of the bank a dilapidated hut, with an enormous red cross on the wall that looked as if it might have been traced with blood, as it gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun.