The Project Gutenberg EBook of Original Short Stories of Maupassant,
Volume 8, by Guy de Maupassant

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Title: Original Short Stories, Volume 8 (of 13)

Author: Guy de Maupassant

Last Updated: February 12, 2009
Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #3084]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAUPASSANT SHORT STORIES ***

Produced by David Widger

ORIGINAL SHORT STORIES, VOLUME 8, (of 13)

By Guy De Maupassant

Translated by:

ALBERT M. C. McMASTER, B.A.
A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.
MME. QUESADA and Others

VOLUME VIII.

CLOCHETTE
THE KISS
THE LEGION OF HONOR
THE TEST
FOUND ON A DROWNED MAN
THE ORPHAN
THE BEGGAR
THE RABBIT
HIS AVENGER
MY UNCLE JULES
THE MODEL
A VAGABOND
THE FISHING HOLE
THE SPASM
IN THE WOOD
MARTINE
ALL OVER
THE PARROT
A PIECE OF STRING

CLOCHETTE

How strange those old recollections are which haunt us, without our
being able to get rid of them.

This one is so very old that I cannot understand how it has clung so
vividly and tenaciously to my memory. Since then I have seen so many
sinister things, which were either affecting or terrible, that I am
astonished at not being able to pass a single day without the face
of Mother Bellflower recurring to my mind's eye, just as I knew her
formerly, now so long ago, when I was ten or twelve years old.

She was an old seamstress who came to my parents' house once a week,
every Thursday, to mend the linen. My parents lived in one of those
country houses called chateaux, which are merely old houses with gable
roofs, to which are attached three or four farms lying around them.

The village, a large village, almost a market town, was a few hundred
yards away, closely circling the church, a red brick church, black with
age.

Well, every Thursday Mother Clochette came between half-past six and
seven in the morning, and went immediately into the linen-room and began
to work. She was a tall, thin, bearded or rather hairy woman, for
she had a beard all over her face, a surprising, an unexpected beard,
growing