The novelist lived for some time in these enchanted and artificial
surroundings, when, suddenly, his malady became aggravated. He was
tortured by neuralgia, and by new mysterious darting pains. His
suffering was so great that he longed to scream. At the same time, his
unhappy heart became softened and he became singularly emotional. His
early faculties were intensified and refined, and in the overtension
of his nerves through suffering his perceptions broadened, and he
gained new ideas of things. This nobler personality Maupassant owes to
those sufferings dear to great souls of whom Daudet speaks. This is
what he says:

"If I could ever tell all, I should utter all the unexplored,
repressed and sad thoughts that I feel in the depths of my being. I
feel them swelling and poisoning me as bile does some people. But if I
could one day give them utterance they would perhaps evaporate, and I
might no longer have anything but a light, joyful heart. Who can say?
Thinking becomes an abominable torture when the brain is an open
wound. I have so many wounds in my head that my ideas cannot stir
without making me long to cry out. Why is it? Why is it? Dumas would
say that my stomach is out of order. I believe, rather, that I have a
poor, proud, shameful heart, that old human heart that people laugh
at, but which is touched, and causes me suffering, and in my head as
well; I have the mind of the Latin race, which is very worn out. And,
again, there are days when I do not think thus, but when I suffer just
the same; for I belong to the family of the thin-skinned. But then I
do not tell it, I do not show it; I conceal it very well, I think.
Without any doubt, I am thought to be one of the most indifferent men
in the world. I am sceptical, which is not the same thing, sceptical
because I am clear-sighted. And my eyes say to my heart, Hide