All Over

"All Over" is a short story by Guy de Maupassant that delves into the complexities of human relationships, love, and desire. Set against the backdrop of a dinner party, the narrative unfolds through the perspectives of various characters, revealing their hidden feelings and unspoken tensions. The story captures the intricacies of intimacy and the often-painful realities of emotional connection, ultimately exploring themes of jealousy, longing, and the fleeting nature of happiness. Maupassant's keen observational style and sharp psychological insight bring the characters to life, making the tale both poignant and relatable.

								
Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance at the large mirror which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he had a walk, a nobility, a “chic,” in short, that indescribable something which establishes a greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He murmured:

“Lormerin is still alive!”

And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.

On his table, where everything had its place, the work table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch he spread out all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before opening the envelopes.

It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious letters bring him? What did they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?

This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple, nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he looked at it uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought: “From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it.”

He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two fingers, striving to read through the envelope, without making up his mind to open it.

Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. “Whom is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its tracings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Whom the deuce can it be from? Pooh! it's only somebody asking for money.”

And he tore open the letter. Then he read:

   MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now
   twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old.
   When I bade you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the
   provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call “my
   hospital.” Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now I
   am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a
   daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen.
   I informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much
   attention to so trifling an event.

   You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if
   you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come
   and dine with her this evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance
   your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, although happy,
   reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no
   longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
                    LISE DE VANCE.
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by a poignant emotion that made the tears mount up to his eyes!

If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he called “Ashflower,” on account of the strange color of her hair and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a dainty, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail baronne, the wife of that gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.

Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved. She familiarly gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.

A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and melancholy now. One evening she had called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.

“I don't know. The moon and the water have affected me. Every time I see poetic things I have a tightening at the heart, and I have to cry.”

He smiled, affected himself, considering her feminine emotion charming —the unaffected emotion of a poor little woman, whom every sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:

“My little Lise, you are exquisite.”

What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over all too quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and never let any one see her afterward.

Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No matter; he had kept a little altar for her in his heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.

He rose, and said aloud: “Certainly, I will go and dine with her this evening!”

And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: “She must look very old, older than I look.” And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!

He turned his attention to the other letters. They were of no importance.

The whole day he kept thinking of this ghost of other days. What was she like now? How strange it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years! But would he recognize her?

He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat than a black one, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see her.

The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when he was a beau, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.

He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly, and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both hands toward him.

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