Guy de Maupassant today remains among France’s renowned short story masters. He excels at recounting the banal daily lives of Frenchmen, which yet reveal deep moral truths. The first of these three classic tales is Boule de Suif, which relates the desperate attempts of several French citizens intent on escaping the rule of invading Prussian forces. The coach heading for Havre is conveying people of varying classes—nobility, rich and merchant—to a woman of comfort, whose heart and dignity prove larger than any of her fellow passengers’. In the Diamond Necklace, a woman obsessed with dreams of riches destroys the happiness she might otherwise have enjoyed. The Horla relates the irrationality of man—in this case, the descent of an otherwise well-situated man into madness by his own unjustified fears.
01—Boule de Suif
02—The Diamond Necklace
03—The Horla
