man are spied, recorded, and commented on, the author of "Boule
de Suif," of "Pierre et Jean," of "Notre Coeur," found a way of
effacing his personality in his work.

Of De Maupassant we know that he was born in Normandy about 1850;
that he was the favorite pupil, if one may so express it, the
literary protege, of Gustave Flaubert; that he made his debut
late in 1880, with a novel inserted in a small collection,
published by Emile Zola and his young friends, under the title:
"The Soirees of Medan"; that subsequently he did not fail to
publish stories and romances every year up to 1891, when a
disease of the brain struck him down in the fullness of
production; and that he died, finally, in 1893, without having
recovered his reason.

We know, too, that he passionately loved a strenuous physical
life and long journeys, particularly long journeys upon the sea.
He owned a little sailing yacht, named after one of his books,
"Bel-Ami," in which he used to sojourn for weeks and months.
These meager details are almost the only ones that have been
gathered as food for the curiosity of the public.

I leave the legendary side, which is always in evidence in the
case of a celebrated man,--that gossip, for example, which avers
that Maupassant was a high liver and a worldling. The very number
of his volumes is a protest to the contrary. One could not write
so large a number of pages in so small a number of years without
the virtue of industry, a virtue incompatible with habits of
dissipation. This does not mean that the writer of these great
romances had no love for pleasure and had not tasted the world,