d on the beach regarding with tear-stained cheeks his
favourite boat, he was taken to Passy, to Doctor Blanche's
institution. One of his examining physicians there was Doctor Franklin
Grout, who later married Flaubert's niece, Caroline Commanville.

July 6, 1893, Maupassant died, as a lamp is extinguished for lack of
oil. But the year he spent at the asylum was wretched; he became a
mere machine, and perhaps the only pleasure he experienced was the
hallucination of bands of black butterflies that seemed to sweep
across his room. Monsieur Maynial does not tell of the black
butterflies, the truth of which I can vouch for, as I heard the story
from Lassalle, the French barytone, a friend of Maupassant's.

It may be interesting to the curious to learn that the good-hearted,
brave heroine of Boule de Suif was a certain Adrienne Legay of Rouen,
and that she heartily reprobated the writer for giving her story to
the world. She even went so far as to say that Guy did it in a spirit
of revenge. Madame Laure de Maupassant made inquiries about the
patriotic little sinner so as to help her. It was too late. She had
died in extreme poverty. The heroine of Mademoiselle Fifi was a
brunette, Rachel by name; the hero was a young German officer, Baron
William d'Eyrick.

Would Maupassant have reached the sunlit heights, as Tolstoy believed?
Who may say? Truth lies not at the bottom of a well, but in suffering;
suffering alone reveals the truth of himself, of his soul to man, and
Guy had suffered as few; he had passed into the Inferno that later
Nietzsche entered, passed into though not through it. Turgenieff, for
whom Guy entertained a profound regard, had influenced him more than
he, with his doglike fidelity for Flaubert, would have cared to
acknowledge. Paul Bourget gives us chapter and verse for this
statement; furthermore, the same authority, has described--in his
Etudes et Portraits--the enormous travail of Maupassant in pursuit of
style--he, seemingly, the most spontaneous writer of his generation.
His books offend, delight, startle, and edify thousands of readers.
That they have done absolute harm we are not prepared to say; book
wickedness is, after all, an academic, not a vital question. If all
the wicked books that have seen the light of publication had wrought
the evil predicted of them the earth would be an abomination. In
reality, we discuss with varying shades of enthusiasm or detestation
such frank literature--naturally