THE PRISONERS
BY GUY DE MAUPASSANT
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant, a French novelist, was born in 1850, and died, insane, in 1893. He served a long apprenticeship under the instruction of Flaubert (his godfather), before publishing any of his writings. When his first story, "Boule de Suif," appeared in the collection entitled "Les Soirées de Médan," in 1880, he was greeted as a master. Notwithstanding his pessimism, he is one of the most highly esteemed French story-writers of the Nineteenth Century.
THE PRISONERS
By GUY DE MAUPASSANT
There was no sound in the forest except the slight rustle of the snow as it fell upon the trees. It had been falling, small and fine, since midday; it powdered the branches with a frosty moss, cast a silver veil over the dead leaves in the hollow, and spread upon the pathways a great, soft, white carpet that thickened the immeasurable silence amid this ocean of trees.
Before the door of the keeper's lodge stood a bare-armed young woman, chopping wood with an ax upon a stone. She was tall, thin and strong—a child of the forest, a daughter and wife of gamekeepers.
A voice called from within the house: "Come in, Berthine; we are alone to-night, and it is getting dark. There may be Prussians or wolves about."
She who was chopping wood replied by splitting another block; her bosom rose and fell with the heavy blows, each time she lifted her arm.