ke refuge when, weary of life, he would
implore a truce, or when he simply wished to work and revive his energies
in old-time joys. It was at this time that was born in him that
voluptuous love of the sea, which in later days could alone withdraw him
from the world, calm him, console him.

In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for, the
family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. For
several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turned
over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks of the
admiralty.

Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where
bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are
certainly scarcely more onerous and he had as chiefs, or colleagues,
Xavier Charmes and Leon Dierx, Henry Roujon and Rene Billotte, but his
office looked out on a beautiful melancholy garden with immense plane
trees around which black circles of crows gathered in winter.

Maupassant made two divisions of his spare hours, one for boating, and
the other for literature. Every evening in spring, every free day, he ran
down to the river whose mysterious current veiled in fog or sparkling in
the sun called to him and bewitched him. In the islands in the Seine
between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of Sartrouville and Triel he
was long noted among the population of boatmen, who have now vanished,
for his unwearying biceps, his cynical gaiety of good-fellowship, his
unfailing practical jokes, his broad witticisms. Sometimes he would row
with frantic speed, free and joyous, through the glowing sunlight on the
stream; sometimes, he would wander along the coast, questioning the
sailors, chatting with the ravageurs, or junk gatherers, or stretched at
full length amid the irises and tansy he would lie for hours watching the
frail insects that play on the surface of the stream, water spiders, or
white butterflies, dragon flies, chasing each other amid the willow
leaves, or frogs asleep on the lily-pads.

The rest of his life was taken up by his work. Without ever becoming
despondent, silent and persistent, he accumulated manuscripts, poetry,
criticisms, plays, romances and novels. Every week he docilely submitted
his work to the great Flaubert, the childhood friend of his mother and
his uncle Alfred Le Poittevin. The master had consented to assist the
young man, to reveal to him the secrets that make chefs-d'oeuvre
immortal. I