Maupassant lived down to that tragic moment of life, when there began the struggle between the lie of the life which surrounded him, and the truth which he was beginning to see. He already had symptoms of spiritual birth.
It is these labours of birth that are expressed in his best productions, especially in his short stories.
If it had been his fate not to die in the labour of birth, but to be born, he would have given great, instructive productions, but even what he gave us during the process of his birth is much. Let us be grateful to this strong, truthful man for what he gave us.
Vorónezh, April 2, 1894.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] In The Non-Resistant, Vol. i., No. 4, Hopedale, Milford, Mass., Feb. 15, 1845.
[2] Not a pamphlet, but an article in The Non-Resistant, Vol. i. No. 4, and very imperfectly quoted by Tolstóy.
[3] To this Tolstóy adds, on his own responsibility: "Why must one, ten, one hundred men not violate God's law, while very many may?"
[4] Translated freely, with some omissions.—Author's Note. I fail to find this Catechism in any of Ballou's writings accessible in and about Boston. The nearest approach to these questions and answers is found scattered throughout his Christian Non-Resistance, in Its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended, Philadelphia, 1846.