Mme. de Maupassant, who had guided her son's early reading, and had gazed
with him at the sublime spectacle of nature, put, off as long as possible
the hour of separation. One day, however, she had to take the child to
the little seminary at Yvetot. Later, he became a student at the college
at Rouen, and became a literary correspondent of Louis Bouilhet. It was
at the latter's house on those Sundays in winter when the Norman rain
drowned the sound of the bells and dashed against the window panes that
the school boy learned to write poetry.

Vacation took the rhetorician back to the north of Normandy. Now it was
shooting at Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, across fields, bogs, and through
the woods. From that time on he sealed his pact with the earth, and those
"deep and delicate roots" which attached him to his native soil began to
grow. It was of Normandy, broad, fresh and virile, that he would
presently demand his inspiration, fervent and eager as a boy's love; it
was in her that he would take refuge when, weary of life, he would
implore a truce, or when he simply wished to work and revive his energies
in old-time joys. It was at this time that was born in him that
voluptuous love of the sea, which in later days could alone withdraw him
from the world, calm him, console him.

In 1870 he lived in the country, then he came to Paris to live; for, the
family fortunes having dwindled, he had to look for a position. For
several years he was a clerk in the Ministry of Marine, where he turned
over musty papers, in the uninteresting company of the clerks of the
admiralty.

Then he went into the department of Public Instruction, where
bureaucratic servility is less intolerable. The daily duties are