A Life by Guy de Maupassant Read Free Book Online Page A

hurried to the Baroness's room. For she had awaited this day of departure with growing impatience.
    Since her arrival at the Convent of the Sacred Heart she had never been out of Rouen, her father having forbidden all such diversions before she should reach the age upon which he had fixed. Twice, only, she had been taken to spend a fortnight in Paris, but that too was a city, and she dreamt only of the country.
    Now she was going to spend the summer at their property at Les Peuples, an old family chateau perched on the cliffs near Yport; * and she was eagerly looking forward to this joyous life of freedom beside the sea. Moreover it had been agreed that she was to be made a present of this manor-house and that she would live there permanently after she was married.
    And this rain, which had fallen without respite since the previous evening, was the first great sorrow of her life.
    But three minutes later she came running out of her mother's room, screaming the house down:
    'Papa, Papa, Mother's agreed! Have the horses harnessed!'
    The deluge did not abate; indeed it seemed to fall even more heavily as the berline drew up at the door. *
    Jeanne stood ready to climb into the carriage as the Baroness came down the stairs, supported on one side by her husband and on the other by a tall housemaid as strong and strapping as a lad. She was a Norman girl from the Pays de Caux, * who looked at least twenty though she was eighteen at most. The family treated her rather as a second daughter, for her mother had suckled Jeanne * at the same time as her. She was called Rosalie.
    It was in fact her principal function to help her mistress as she walked, for the Baroness had grown enormously fat in recent years as the result of cardiac hypertrophy, which ailed her constantly.
    Breathing heavily, the Baroness reached the front steps of the old town-house, saw the courtyard streaming with water, and muttered:
    'Really, this is not very sensible.'
    Her husband replied with his usual smile:
    'The decision was yours, Madame Adélaïde.'
    Because she bore the sonorous name of Adélaïde, he always prefaced it with a 'Madame' which he uttered with a certain air of faintly mocking respect.
    Thereupon she continued her progress and struggled into the carriage, whose springs sagged. The Baron sat down by her side, while Jeanne and Rosalie took their places with their backs to the horses.
    Ludivine, the cook, brought piles of cloaks which they spread over their knees, as well as two baskets which they tucked away under their legs. Then she climbed up beside Père Simon and wrapped herself in a large rug, which covered her head completely. The caretaker and his wife came to say goodbye and shut the carriage-door. They listened to the final instructions about the trunks, which were to, follow in a cart; and away the travellers went.
    Père Simon, the coachman, sat with his head bowed and his shoulders hunched beneath the rain, disappearing under the triple cape of his box-coat. Howling gusts of wind and rain beat against the carriage-windows and flooded the roadway.
    Drawn by two horses at a brisk trot, the berline proceeded rapidly down towards the quayside and along the line of tall ships whose masts, yards, and rigging rose forlornly into the teeming sky like trees stripped bare of their leaves. Then it turned into the long Boulevard du Mont Riboudet.
    Soon they were crossing open countryside; and from time to time the blurred outline of a rain-drenched willow could be seen through the watery murk, its branches dangling like the limbs of a corpse. The horses' hooves splashed through the puddles as the four wheels span sunbursts of mud.
    No one spoke; their spirits seemed as thoroughly dampened as the waterlogged earth. Mama leant her head back and closed her eyes. The Baron gazed out gloomily at the unchanging, sodden landscape. Rosalie, nursing a parcel on her knees, was sunk in the animal-like rumination of common folk. But beneath this warm,