The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 6, by
Guy de Maupassant

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Title: The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 6

Author: Guy de Maupassant

Release Date: October 13, 2010 [EBook #33928]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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BEL AMI

The Works of Guy de Maupassant

VOLUME VI

NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY
NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
BIGELOW, SMITH & CO.

BEL AMI

(A LADIES' MAN)

I

When the cashier had given him the change out of his five francpiece,
George Duroy left the restaurant.

As he had a good carriage, both naturally and from his military
training, he drew himself up, twirled his moustache, and threw upon the
lingering customers a rapid and sweeping glance--one of those glances
which take in everything within their range like a casting net.

The women looked up at him in turn--three little work-girls, a
middle-aged music mistress, disheveled, untidy, and wearing a bonnet
always dusty and a dress always awry; and two shopkeepers' wives dining
with their husbands--all regular customers at this slap-bang
establishment.

When he was on the pavement outside, he stood still for a moment, asking
himself what he should do. It was the 28th of June, and he had just
three francs forty centimes in his pocket to carry him to the end of the
month. This meant the option of two dinners without lunch or two lunches
without dinner. He reflected that as the earlier repasts cost twenty
sous apiece, and the latter thirty, he would, if he were content with
the lunches, be one franc twenty centimes to the good, which would
further represent two snacks of bread and sausage and two bocks of beer
on the boulevards. This latter item was his greatest extravagance and
his chief pleasure of a night; and he began to descend the Rue
Notre-Dame de Lorette.

He walked as in the days when he had worn a hussar uniform, his chest
thrown o