mer two stories, _Allouma_ and _Au Soir_, may
be found together, the whole of the first of which, and the beginning of
the second, are first-rate. The above mentioned _Contes de la Becasse_
are almost all good, though by no means all sporting.

[Sidenote: Purely comic.]

For pure comedy one might put as the first three--with the caution that
Mrs. Grundy had better keep away from them--_Les Soeurs Rondoli_,[506]
for which I feel certain that, when Maupassant reached the Elysian
Fields, Aristophanes and Rabelais jointly requested the pleasure of
introducing him to the company, and crowned him with the choicest
laurels; _Mouche_, which is really touching as well as tickling at the
end, though the grave and precise must be doubly warned off this; and
_Enragee_--which is a sort of blend of an old smoking-room story of the
perils of the honeymoon when new, and that curious tale[507] of Vigny's
which has been given above.

[Sidenote: Tragic.]

For pure, or almost pure, tragedy and pathos, again, _Monsieur Parent_
stands first--the history of the late vengeance of a deceived husband
and friend. _Miss Harriet_ gives us something more than a stage
Englishwoman with large feet, projecting teeth, tartan skirts, and
tracts, though it gives us this too. _Madame Baptiste_--the very short
tale of a hapless woman who, having been the victim of crime in her
youth, is pursued by the scandal thereof to suicide, in spite of her
having found a worthy husband--is one of Maupassant's intensest.

[Sidenote: Tales of Life's Irony.]

As examples, bending sometimes to the comic, sometimes to the pathetic
side of studies in the irony of life, one may recommend _A Cheval_ (a
holiday taken by a poor but well-born family, which saddles them with an
unconscionable "run-over" Old-_Wo_man-of-the-_Land_); _La Parure_ and
_Les Bijous_ (the first a variant of _A Cheval_, the second a discovery
by a husband, after his wife's death, of her shame); and perhaps best of
all, _Regret_, in which a gentleman of sixty, reflecting on his wasted
life, remembers a picnic, decades earlier, where the wife of his
lifelong friend--both of them still friends and neighbours--behaved
rather oddly. He hurries across to ask her (whom he finds jam-making)
what she would have done if he had "failed in respect," and receives the
cool answer, "J'aurais cede." It is good; but fancy not being able to
take a walk, and observe the primroses by the river's brim, without
being bou