ain this
anomaly by the coexistence of a nervous lesion, light at first, with a
muscular, athletic temperament. Whatever the cause, the effect is
undeniable. The skilled and dainty pessimism of De Maupassant was
accompanied by a vigor and physique very unusual. His sensations are in
turn those of a hunter and of a sailor, who have, as the old French
saying expressively puts it, "swift foot, eagle eye," and who are
attuned to all the whisperings of nature.

The only confidences that he has ever permitted his pen to tell of the
intoxication of a free, animal existence are in the opening pages of
the story entitled "Mouche," where he recalls, among the sweetest
memories of his youth, his rollicking canoe parties upon the Seine, and
in the description in "La Vie Errante" of a night spent on the
sea,--"to be alone upon the water under the sky, through a warm
night,"--in which he speaks of the happiness of those "who receive
sensations through the whole surface of their flesh, as they do through
their eyes, their mouth, their ears, and sense of smell."

His unique and too scanty collection of verses, written in early youth,
contains the two most fearless, I was going to say the most ingenuous,
paeans, perhaps, that have been written since the Renaissance: "At the
Water's Edge" (Au Bord de l'Eau) and the "Rustic Venus" (La Venus
Rustique). But here is a paganism whose ardor, by a contrast which
brings up the ever present duality of his nature, ends in an
inexpressible shiver of scorn:

"We look at each other, astonished, immovable,
And both are so pale that it makes us fear."
* * * * *
"Alas! through all our senses slips life itself away."

This ending of the "Water's Edge" is less sinister than the murder and
the vision of horror which terminate the pantheistic hymn of the
"Rustic Venus." Considered as documents revealing the cast of mind of
him who composed them, these two lyrical essays are especially
significant, since they were spontaneous. They explain why De
Maupassant, in the early years of production, voluntarily chose, as the
heroes of his stories, creatures very near to primitive existence,
peasants, sailors, poachers, girls of the farm, and the source of the
vigor with which he describes these rude figures. The robustness of his
animalism permits him fully to imagine all the simple sensations of
these beings, while his pessimism, which tinges these sketches of
bru