The Relics

"The Relics" by Guy de Maupassant is a short story that explores themes of nostalgia, memory, and the passage of time. The narrative centers on the protagonist's encounter with a collection of objects from his past, which evoke a sense of longing and reflection. Through sharp and poignant prose, Maupassant examines how these relics embody both personal history and a deeper commentary on human experience, ultimately revealing the bittersweet nature of remembrance and the impact of the past on the present. The story captures Maupassant's signature style, blending realism with a touch of existential contemplation.

• Short story

								
They had given him a grand public funeral, like they do victorious
soldiers who have added some dazzling pages to the glorious annals of
their country, who have restored courage to desponding heads and cast
over other nations the proud shadow of their country's flag, like a yoke
under which those went who were no longer to have a country, or liberty.

During a whole bright and calm night, when falling stars made people
think of unknown metamorphoses and the transmigration of souls, who
knows whether tall cavalry soldiers in their cuirasses and sitting as
motionless as statues on their horses, had watched by the dead man's
coffin, which was resting, covered with wreaths, under the porch of the
heroes, every stone of which is engraved with the name of a brave man,
and of a battle.

The whole town was in mourning, as if it had lost the only object that
had possession of its heart, and which it loved. The crowd went silently
and thoughtfully down the avenue of the Champs Elysées, and they
almost fought for the commemorative medals and the common portraits
which hawkers were selling, or climbed upon the stands which street boys
had erected here and there, and whence they could see over the heads of
the crowd. The Place de la Concorde had something solemn about it,
with its circle of statues hung from head to foot with long crape
coverings, which looked in the distance like widows, weeping and
praying.

According to his last wish, Jean Ramel had been conveyed to the Pantheon
in the wretched paupers' hearse, which conveys them to the common grave
at the shambling trot of some thin and broken-winded horse.

That dreadful, black conveyance without any drapery, without plumes and
without flowers, which was followed by Ministers and deputies, by
several regiments with their bands, and their flags flying above the
helmets and the sabers, by children from the national schools, by
delegates from the provinces, and an innumerable crowd of men in
blouses, of women, of shop-keepers from every quarter, had a most
theatrical effect, and while standing on the steps of the Pantheon, at
the foot of the massive columns of the portico, the orators successively
discanted on his apotheosis, tried to make their voices predominate over
the noise, emphasized their pompous periods, and finished the
performance by a poor third act, which makes people yawn and gradually
empties the theater, people remembered who that man had been, on whom
such posthumous honors were being bestowed, and who was having such a
funeral: it was Jean Ramel.

Those three sonorous syllables called up a lionine head, with white hair
thrown back in disorder, like a mane, with features that looked as if
they had been cut out with a bill-hook, but which were so powerful, and
in which there lay such a flame of life, that one forgot their vulgarity
and ugliness; with black eyes under bushy eyebrows, which dilated and
flashed like lightning, now were veiled as if in tears and then were
filled with serene mildness, with a voice which now growled so as almost
to terrify its hearers, and which would have filled the hall of some
working men's club, full of the thick smoke from strong pipes without
being affected by it, and then would be soft, coaxing, persuasive and
unctuous like that of a priest who is holding out promises of Paradise,
or giving absolution for our sins.

He had had the good luck to be persecuted, to be in the eyes of the
people, the incarnation of that lying formula which appears on every
public edifice, of those three words of the Golden Age, which make
those who think, those who suffer and those who govern, smile somewhat
sadly, Liberty, Fraternity, Equality. Luck had been kind to him, had
sustained, had pushed him on by the shoulders, and had set him up on his
pedestal again when he had fallen down, like all idols do.

He spoke and he wrote, and always in order to announce the good news to
all the multitudes who suffered--no matter to what grade of society they
might belong--to hold out his hand to them and to defend them, to attack
the abuses of the Code--that book of injustice and severity--to speak
the truth boldly, even when it lashed his enemies as if it had been a
whip.

His books were like Gospels, which are read chapter by chapter, and
warmed the most despairing and the most sorrowing hearts, and brought
comfort, hope and dreams to each.

He had lived very modestly until the end, and appeared to spend nothing;
and he only kept one old servant, who spoke to him in the Basque
dialect.

That chaste philosopher, who had all his life long feared women's snares
and wiles, who had looked upon love as a luxury made only for the rich
and idle, which unsettles the brain and interferes with acuteness of
thought, had allowed himself to be caught like an ordinary man, late in
life, when his hair was white and his forehead deeply wrinkled.

It was not, however, as happens in the visions of solitary ascetics,
some strange queen or female magician, with stars in her eyes and
witchery in her voice, some loose woman who held up the symbolical lamp
immodestly, to light up her radiant nudity, and the pink and white
bouquet of her sweet-smelling skin, some woman in search of voluptuous
pleasures, whose lascivious appeals it is impossible for any man to
listen to, without being excited to the very depths of his being.
Neither a princess out of some fairy tale, nor a frail beauty who was an
expert in the art of reviving the ardor of old men, and of leading them
astray, nor a woman who was disgusted with her ideals, that always
turned out to be alike, and who dreamt of awakening the heart of one of
those men who suffer, who have afforded so much alleviation to human
misery, who seemed to be surrounded by a halo, and who never knew
anything but the true, the beautiful and the good.

It was only a little girl of twenty, who was as pretty as a wild flower,
who had a ringing laugh, white teeth, and a mind that was as spotless as
a new mirror, in which no figure has been reflected as yet.

He was in exile at the time for having given public expression to what
he thought, and he was living in an Italian village which was buried in
chestnut trees and situated on the shores of a lake that was narrow and
so transparent that it might have been taken for some nobleman's fish
pond that was like an emerald in a large park. The village consisted of
about twenty red-tiled houses. Several paths paved with flint led up the
side of the hill among the vines where the Madonna, full of grace and
goodness extended her indulgence.

For the first time in his life Ramel remarked that there were some lips
that were more desirable, more smiling than others, that there was hair
in which it must be delicious to bury the fingers like in fine silk, and
which it must be delightful to kiss, and that there were eyes which
contained an infinitude of caresses, and he had spelled right through
the eclogue, which at length revealed true happiness to him, and he had

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