King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Regret


author: Guy de Maupassant

genre: short story/classics



first lines:
Monsieur Saval, who was called in Mantes "Father Saval," had just risen from bed. He was weeping. It was a dull autumn day; the leaves were falling. They fell slowly in the rain, like a heavier and slower rain.




source: http://www.americanliterature.com/





In this story Paul Saval looks back upon his life with regrets. His parents have both passed on, he is not married and he is sixty-two years old.


He thinks about death and wonders how people can enjoy life knowing they will die one day.

Is it not strange that people can laugh, amuse themselves, be joyful under that eternal certainty of death? If this death were only probable, one could then have hope; but no, it is inevitable, as inevitable as that night follows the day.

Paul also reflects on never having someone love him, which I found to be the most depressing part of this story. He admits to being secretly in love with his best friends wife at one point, a woman named Madame Sandres.

He had not even been loved. No woman had reposed on his bosom, in a complete abandon of love. He knew nothing of the delicious anguish of expectation, the divine vibration of a hand in yours, of the ecstasy of triumphant passion.


What superhuman happiness must overflow your heart, when lips encounter lips for the first time, when the grasp of four arms makes one being of you, a being unutterably happy, two beings infatuated with one another.

As Paul reminisces on his secret love, and remembers one day when he was about to confess his love to her, he is full of remorse. He decides to go to Madame Sandres now and tell her how he has felt all this time.








I found this to be a beautifully written and sad short story. The way de Maupassant wrote it is with a sad heart. It's impressive that he was able to pack so much meaning and feeling in so little words.

I could not help but think that Regret was a direct reflection of the author's own feelings.


Moral of the story? Don't let life pass you by?

Life has its sombre days. It would no longer have any but sombre days for him, for he had reached the age of sixty-two. He is alone, an old bachelor, with nobody about him. How sad it is to die alone, all alone, without any one who is devoted to you!

You can read Regret
for free online
here.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.




Maupassant suffered from mental illness in his later years and attempted suicide on January 2nd, 1892. He was committed to a private asylum in Paris and died the following year.

title: A Sister's Confession


author: Guy de Maupassant


genre: short story/classics


first line: Marguerite de Therelles was dying.


source: http://www.americanliterature.com/





A Sister's Confession opens with Marguerite de Therelles on her death bed and her older sister Suzanne, sobbing beside her.



Years ago Suzanne's fiance Henry died suddenly, and Marguerite swore she would never marry and never leave her sisters side. Marguerite however, was sickly and seemed unhappy after she promised to live with her sister forever.



When the priest arrives, Marguerite sits up suddenly in her bed and says she needs to confess. I won't tell you what the confession was, you'll have to read the story to find out.




This short story was so-so for me. The storyline was a bit too cliche for me, but then again this was written in the mid to late 1800's.


Guy de Maupassant did have me intrigued though, I really wanted to know what the confession was.


The one thing that bothered me about this story was that Marguerite's dialogue was annoying.

You remember? Oh, don't speak! Listen, listen. I, I alone did not die. But I have always been ill. Listen--he died--you know--listen--that was not the worst. It was afterward, later--always--the most terrible-listen.



My life, all my life--such torture! I said to myself: 'I will never leave my sister. And on my deathbed I will tell her all.' And now I have told. And I have always thought of this moment--the moment when all would be told. Now it has come. It is terrible--oh!--sister--

I will be reading more of Guy de Maupassant's short stories. I did enjoy The Necklace.





You can read A Sister's Confession for free online here.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents.



Maupassant suffered from mental illness in his later years and attempted suicide on January 2nd, 1892. He was committed to a private asylum in Paris and died the following year.

title: The Necklace

author: Guy de Maupassant

source: http://www.americanliterature.com/

genre: short story

published: 1884

first line: SHE WAS ONE OF THOSE PRETTY AND CHARMING GIRLS BORN, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans.



The short story The Necklace is about a woman named Mathilde Loisel who is unhappy with her lot in life. She feels she deserves to be rich and have all sorts of fancy and expensive belongings.







She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her.






One day her husband hands her an invitation to a party but Mathilde is upset complaining that she has nothing to wear.
Her husband gives her his savings to buy a dress for the event. Mathilde is still unhappy because she has no jewelry to wear.

She ends up borrowing a diamond necklace from her friend, Madame Jeanne, who is well off. Mathilde is a hit at the party with her beautiful dress and diamond necklace. However, when she arrives home that night, she notices the necklace is no longer around her neck.



In a frenzy her husband runs out trying to retrace their steps, but the necklace is nowhere to be found. Their only hope is to replace the necklace so they begin to go to jewelers trying to find its match.

Mathilde's poor husband uses his entire inheritance plus borrows money from friends and takes out loans just to buy the new necklace.

He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing it he could honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.




After ten years, the debt was paid off with much suffering and hard work. Mathilde didn't have any nice clothes or extras at all now and aged prematurely.
Now she really knew what poverty was.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.






While out one day Mathilde runs into the her friend who lent her the necklace all those years ago. Madame Jeanne does not recognize Mathilde, she has aged so badly.
Mathilde blames her friend for her misery and tells her that all those years ago she lost her diamond necklace and has been paying off the debt ever since.
Madame Jeanne reveals a sad truth about the necklace.





I enjoyed this short story by Guy de Maupassant. There is a twist ending that I saw coming but it still gave me a little shock when I read it.

The moral of the story: All that glitters is not gold.












Henri Ren Albert Guy de Maupassant (Aug 5, 1850 - Jul 6, 1893) is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and his work influenced Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, Anton Chekhov and Henry James among others. He was a popular French writer and fought in the Franco-Prussian war as a young man. He drew heavily on that experience and that war provides the setting for many of his stories which often depict the tragedy and suffering of innocent civilians caught in war's path.






Read The Necklace free online here.