Great French Short Stories Read online

  DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS

  SERIES EDITOR: PAUL NEGRI

  Copyright

  This compilation copyright © 2004 by Dover Publications, Inc.

  “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler,” “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and “Micromegas,” translations copyright © 1990 by Wallace Fowlie.

  “The Dark Lantern,” “Emilie,” and “Salome,” from Nineteenth Century French Tales, copyright ©1960, 1968 by Angel Flores.

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  This Dover edition, first published in 2004, is an unabridged republication of twelve stories.

  The present translations of “The Legend of St. Julian the Hospitaler,” “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” and “Micromegas” are taken from French Stories/Contes Français: A Bantam Dual-Language Book, edited and translated by Wallace Fowlie, published by Bantam Books, Inc., New York, in 1960, and reprinted by Dover as French Stories/Contes Français: A Dual-Language Book in 1990.

  The present translations of “The Dark Lantern” and “Salome,” by William E. Smith, and “Emilie,” by William M. Davis, are taken from Nineteenth Century French Tales, edited by Angel Flores, published by Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, in 1960, and reprinted by Dover as Great Nineteenth-Century French Short Stories in 1990.

  The present translation of “The Necklace” is taken from The Works of Guy de Maupassant: Short Stories, published by Black’s Readers Service, Roslyn, n.d.

  The present translation of “The Unknown Masterpiece” is taken from Honoré de Balzac: Selected Short Stories/Contes Choisis: A Dual-Language Book, edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum, published by Dover in 2000.

  The present translations of “The Attack on the Mill,” “Mateo Falcone,” and “The Pope’s Mule” are taken from Nineteenth-Century French Short Stories/Contes et Nouvelles Français du XIXe Siècle: A Dual-Language Book, edited and translated by Stanley Appelbaum, published by Dover in 2000.

  “The Horla” is reprinted from a standard translated edition.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Great French short stories / edited by Paul Negri.

  p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)

  9780486115412

  1. Short stories, French—Translations into English. 2. French fiction—19th century—Translations into English. I. Negri, Paul. II. Series.

  PQ1278.G74 2004

  843’.0108—c22

  2004043940

  Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

  43470202

  www.doverpublications.com

  Note

  The nineteenth-century rise of newspapers and periodicals created a new demand and appreciation for short fiction. In the hands of the great French writers of the day, the genre of the short story flourished. Under the influence of foreign authors (notably Edgar Allan Poe and E. T. A. Hoffmann), many of the classic French short stories explored themes of the fantastic and supernatural. The Realist movement, by contrast, spawned stories that portrayed everyday subjects in as respectful and unpretentious a manner as possible. The competing Symbolist movement sought to bring profound truths into focus through the use of mysterious and often dark imagery. The result of these many disparate influences was a short story literature of tremendous range and variety.

  This volume contains twelve of the finest and best-known short stories by French writers, most of them written during the nineteenth-century “golden age” of French short fiction. In addition, this collection includes a selection by the great eighteenth-century satirist Voltaire as well as a story by the twentieth-century master André Gide. These stories still maintain their power to surprise and enthrall readers.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Note

  THE LEGEND OF ST. JULIAN THE HOSPITALER - La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier

  THE NECKLACE - La Parure

  THE HORLA - Le Horla

  THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE - Le Chef-d’Oeuvre Inconnu

  THE ATTACK ON THE MILL - L’Attaque du Moulin

  MATEO FALCONE

  THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL SON - Le Retour de l’Enfant Prodigue

  THE DARK LANTERN - La Lanterne Sourde

  EMILIE

  MICROMEGAS - Micromégas

  THE POPE’S MULE - La Mule du Pape

  SALOMÉ

  DOVER · THRIFT · EDITIONS

  Gustave Flaubert

  THE LEGEND OF ST. JULIAN THE HOSPITALER

  La Légende de Saint Julien l’Hospitalier

  I

  Julian’s father and mother lived in a castle, in the middle of a forest, on the slope of a hill.

  The four towers at the corners had pointed roofs covered with scales of lead, and the base of the walls rested on shafts of rock which fell steeply to the bottom of the moat.

  The pavement of the courtyard was as clean as the flagstones of a church. Long gutter-spouts, representing dragons, with their mouths hanging down, spat rainwater into the cistern; and on the window ledges, at every floor, in a pot of painted earthenware, a basil or heliotrope blossomed.

  A second enclosure, made with stakes, contained first an orchard of fruit trees, then a flower-bed where flowers were patterned into the form of figures, and then a trellis with arbors where you could take a walk, and a mall where the pages could play. On the other side were the kennels, the stables, the bakery, the wine-presses and the barns. A pasture of green grass spread round about, itself enclosed by a stout thorn-hedge.

  They had lived at peace for so long that the portcullis was never lowered. The moats were full of water, birds made their nests in the cracks of the battlements, and when the blaze of the sun was too strong, the archer, who all day long walked back and forth on the curtain wall, went into the watch-tower and slept like a monk.

  Inside, the ironwork glistened everywhere. Tapestries in the bedrooms were protection against the cold. Cupboards overflowed with linen, casks of wine were piled up in the cellars, and oak coffers creaked with the weight of bags of money.

  In the armory, between standards and heads of wild beasts, you could see weapons of every age and nation, from the slings of the Amalekites and the javelins of the Garamantes, to the short swords of the Saracens and the Norman coats-of-mail.

  The large spit in the kitchen could roast an ox. The chapel was as sumptuous as the oratory of a king. There was even, in a remote corner, a Roman steam-bath; but the good lord did not use it, considering it a pagan practice.

  Always wrapped in a coat lined with fox fur, he walked about his house, meting out justice to his vassals and settling the quarrels of his neighbors. During the winter, he would watch the snowflakes fall or have stories read to him. With the first fine days he went off on his mule along the small lanes, beside the wheat turning green, and chatted with the peasants, to whom he gave advice. After many adventures, he had taken as his wife a young lady of high lineage.

  Her skin was very white, and she was a bit proud and serious. The horns of her coif grazed the lintel of the doors, and the train of her dress trailed three paces behind her. Her household was run like the inside of a monastery. Each morning she distributed the work to her servants, supervised the preserves and unguents, span at her distaff or embroidered altar-cloths. After much praying to God, a son was born to her.

  There was great rejoicing then, and a banquet which lasted three days and four nights, on leaves strewn about, under the illumination from torches and the playing of harps. They ate the rarest spices, with chickens as fat as sheep. For amusement, a dwarf came out of a pastry-pie, and as the bowls gave out because the crowd was constantly increasi
ng, they were obliged to drink from horns and helmets.

  The new mother was not present at this festivity. She quietly stayed in her bed. One evening she awoke and saw, under a moonbeam which came through the window, something like a moving shadow. It was an old man in a frieze robe, with a rosary at his side, a wallet on his shoulder, and resembling a hermit. He came near to her bedside and said to her, without opening his lips.

  “Rejoice, O mother, your son will be a saint!”

  She was going to cry out, but, gliding along the moonbeam, he gently rose up into the air and disappeared. The banquet songs broke out louder. She heard the voices of angels and her head fell back on her pillow over which hung a martyr’s bone in a frame of carbuncles.

  The next day all the servants were questioned and declared they had seen no hermit. Dream or reality, it must have been a message from heaven, but she was careful to say nothing about it, for fear she would be accused of pride.

  The guests departed at day-break, Julian’s father was outside of the postern gate where he had just accompanied the last one to go, when suddenly a beggar rose up before him in the mist. He was a Gypsy with plaited beard and silver rings on his two arms, and flaming eyes. Like one inspired, he stammered these disconnected words:

  “Ah, ah! your son! . . . much blood! . . . much glory! . . . always happy! . . . an emperor’s family.”

  And bending down to pick up his alms, he was lost in the grass and disappeared.

  The good castellan looked right and left, and called as loud as he could. No one! The wind whistled and the morning mist flew away.

  He attributed this vision to the weariness of his head for having slept too little. “If I speak of this, they will make fun of me,” he said to himself. Yet the glory destined to his son dazzled him, although the promise was not clear and he even doubted he had heard it.

  The husband and wife kept their secret. But both cherished the child with an equal love, and respecting him as one marked by God, they had infinite care for his person. His crib was padded with the finest down, a lamp in the form of a dove burned over it, three nurses rocked him, and, tightly wrapped in his swaddling-clothes, with rosy face and blue eyes, dressed in a brocade mantle and a bonnet set with pearls, he looked like a little Lord Jesus. He teethed without crying once.

  When he was seven, his mother taught him to sing. To make him brave, his father lifted him up on to a large horse. The child smiled with pleasure and was not long in knowing everything about chargers.

  A very learned old monk taught him Holy Scripture, Arabic numerals, Latin letters, and how to make charming pictures on vellum. They worked together, high up in a turret, away from noise.

  When the lesson was over, they went down into the garden where they studied flowers as they walked slowly about.

  Sometimes they saw, passing below in the valley, a file of beasts of burden, led by a man walking, dressed in an Oriental fashion. The castellan, recognizing him for a merchant, would send a page to him. The stranger, when he felt confidence, turned off from his road. When led into the parlor, he would take out of his coffers strips of velvet and silk, jewelry, spices and strange things of unknown use. After this, the fellow, having suffered no violence, would go off, with a large profit. At other times, a group of pilgrims would knock at the door. Their wet clothes steamed before the hearth. When they had eaten heartily, they told the story of their travels: the courses of the ships on the foamy sea, the journeyings on foot in the burning sand, the cruelty of the pagans, the caves of Syria, the Manger and the Sepulcher. Then they would give the young lord shells from their cloaks.

  Often the castellan would give a feast for his old companions-at-arms. As they drank, they recalled their wars, the storming of fortresses with the crash of war machines and huge wounds. As he listened to them, Julian uttered cries; his father then did not doubt that one day he would be a conqueror. But at evening, coming from the Angelus, when he passed among the poor, with their heads bowed, he took money from his purse with such modesty and so noble an air, that his mother was sure she would see him one day an archbishop.

  His place in chapel was beside his parents, and no matter how long the services, he remained kneeling on his prayer-stool, his cap on the floor and his hands clasped.

  One day, during mass, he saw, on raising his head, a small white mouse coming out of a hole in the wall. It trotted over the first step of the altar and after two or three turns to right and left, scampered back from where it had come. The next Sunday, he was disturbed by the thought that he might see it again. It came back, and each Sunday, he waited for it, was upset by it, grew to hate it and made up his mind to get rid of it.

  So, having shut the door and spread on the steps some cake-crumbs, he took his place in front of the hole, with a stick in his hand.

  After a long time, a pink nose appeared, and then the entire mouse. He struck a light blow, and stood lost in stupefaction before the small body that did not move again. A drop of blood spotted the pavement. He quickly wiped it with his sleeve, threw the mouse outdoors, and did not mention the matter to anyone.

  All kinds of small birds were pecking at the seeds in the garden. He had the idea of putting peas in a hollow reed. When he heard the birds chirping in a tree, he came up to it quietly, then raised his pipe and blew out his cheeks. The little creatures rained down on his shoulders in such numbers that he could not keep from laughing with delight over his malice.

  One morning, as he was coming back along the curtain wall, he saw on the top of the rampart a fat pigeon strutting in the sun. Julian stopped to look at it. The wall at that spot had a breach and a fragment of stone lay close to his fingers. He swung his arm and the stone struck down the bird which fell like a lump into the moat.

  He rushed down after it, tearing himself on the undergrowth, ferreting about everywhere, more nimble than a young dog.

  The pigeon, its wings broken, hung quivering in the branches of a privet.

  Its persistence to live irritated the boy. He began to strangle it. The bird’s convulsions made his heart beat and filled him with a wild tumultuous pleasure. When it stiffened for the last time, he felt himself fainting.

  During the evening meal, his father declared it was time for him to learn venery, and went to look for an old copybook containing, in the form of questions and answers, the entire pastime of hunting. In it a teacher demonstrated to his pupil the art of training dogs and taming falcons, of setting traps, of how to recognize the stag by his droppings, the fox by its track, the wolf by its scratchings; the right way to make out their tracks, the way in which to start them, where their lairs are usually found, which winds are the most favorable, with a list of the calls and the rules for the quarry.

  When Julian could recite all these things by heart, his father made up a pack of hounds for him.

  First you could see twenty-four greyhounds from Barbary, swifter than gazelles, but subject to over-excitement; then seventeen pairs of Breton hounds, with red coats and white spots, unshakably dependable, broad-chested and great howlers. For an attack on the wild boar and for dangerous redoublings, there were forty griffons, as shaggy as bears. Mastiffs from Tartary, almost as tall as asses, flame-colored, with broad backs and straight legs, were intended to hunt aurochs. The black coats of the spaniels shone like satin. The yapping of the talbots was equal to the chanting of the beagles. In a yard by themselves, as they shook their chains and rolled their eyes, growled eight Alain bulldogs, formidable beasts which fly at the belly of a horseman and have no fear of lions.

  All ate wheat bread, drank from stone troughs, and bore sonorous names.

  The falconry, possibly, was better chosen than the pack. The good lord, thanks to money, had secured tercelets from the Caucasus, sakers from Babylonia, gerfalcons from Germany, and peregrines, caught on the cliffs, at the edge of cold seas, in distant countries. They were housed in a shed with a thatched roof, and attached according to size on the perching-bar. Before them was a strip of grass where from
time to time they were placed to unstiffen their legs.

  Rabbit-nets, hooks, wolf-traps and all kinds of snares were constructed.

  They often took into the country setters which quickly came to a point. Then grooms, advancing step by step, cautiously spread over their motionless bodies an immense net. A word of command made them bark; the quail took wing; and ladies from nearby, invited with their husbands, children, handmaids,—the entire group fell on the birds and easily caught them.

  On other occasions, to start the hares, they would beat drums. Foxes fell into pits, or a trap would spring and catch a wolf by its paw.

  But Julian scorned these easy devices. He preferred to hunt far from the others, with his horse and falcon. It was almost always a large Scythian tartaret, white as snow. Its leather hood was topped with a plume, gold bells shook on its blue feet. It stood firm on its master’s arm while the horse galloped and the plains unrolled. Julian, untying the jesses, would suddenly release it. The bold bird rose straight as an arrow into the air, and you saw two uneven specks turn, meet and disappear in the high blue of the sky. The falcon was not long in coming down, tearing apart some bird, and returned to perch on the gauntlet, its two wings quivering.

  In this way, Julian flew his falcon at the heron, the kite, the crow and the vulture.

  As he blew his horn, he loved to follow his dogs when they ran over the side of the hills, jumped the streams, and climbed back to the woods. When the stag began to groan under the bites of the dogs, he killed it quickly and then revelled in the fury of the mastiffs as they devoured it, cut into pieces on its steaming skin.

  On foggy days he would go down into a marsh to ambush geese and otters and wild-duck.