its merciless revelation of the hidden springs of the human
heart, whether of aristocrat, bourgeois, peasant, or priest,
allow one to call him a Meissonier in words.

The school of romantic realism which was founded by Merimee and
Balzac found its culmination in De Maupassant. He surpassed his
mentor, Flaubert, in the breadth and vividness of his work, and
one of the greatest of modern French critics has recorded the
deliberate opinion, that of all Taine's pupils Maupassant had the
greatest command of language and the most finished and incisive
style. Robust in imagination and fired with natural passion, his
psychological curiosity kept him true to human nature, while at
the same time his mental eye, when fixed upon the most ordinary
phases of human conduct, could see some new motive or aspect of
things hitherto unnoticed by the careless crowd.

It has been said by casual critics that Maupassant lacked one
quality indispensable to the production of truly artistic work,
viz: an absolutely normal, that is, moral, point of view. The
answer to this criticism is obvious. No dissector of the gamut of
human pas- sion and folly in all its tones could present aught
that could be called new, if ungifted with a viewpoint totally
out of the ordinary plane. Cold and merciless in the use of this
point de vue De Maupassant undoubtedly is, especially in such
vivid depictions of love, both physical and maternal, as we find
in "L'histoire d'une fille de ferme" and "La femme de Paul." But
then the surgeon's scalpel never hesitates at giving pain, and
pain is often the road to health and ease. Some of Maupassant's
short stories are sermons more forcible than any moral
dissertation could ever be.