The Relics Page #2

"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

								

had a child, a son, by her.

This was the only secret that Ramel jealously concealed, and which no
more than two or three of his oldest friends knew anything about, and
while he hesitated about spending twopence on himself, and went to the
Institute and to the Chamber of Deputies outside an omnibus, Pepa led
the happy life of a millionaire who is not frightened of the to-morrow,
and brought up her son like a little prince, with a tutor and three
servants, who had nothing to do but to look after him.

All that Ramel made went into his mistress's hands, and when he felt
that his last hour was approaching, and that there was no hope of his
recovery--in full possession of his faculties and joy in his dull
eyes--he gave his name to Pepa, and made her his lawful widow, in the
presence of all his friends. She inherited everything that her former
lover left behind, a considerable income from his share of the annual
profits on his books, and also his pension, which the State continued to
pay to her.

Little Ramel throve wonderfully amidst all this luxury, and gave free
scope to his instincts and his caprices, without his mother ever having
the courage to reprove him in the least, and he did not bear the
slightest resemblance to Jean Ramel.

Full of pranks, effeminate, a superfine dandy, and precociously vicious,
he suggested the idea of those pages at the Court of Florence, whom we
frequently meet with in The Decameron, and who were the playthings for
the idle hands and tips of the patrician ladies.

He was very ignorant and lived at a great rate, bet on races, and played
cards for heavy stakes with seasoned gamblers, old enough to be his
father. And it was distressing to hear this lad joke about the memory of
him whom he called the old man, and persecute his mother because of
the worship and adoration which she felt for Jean Ramel, whom she spoke
of as if he had become a demigod when he died, like in Roman theogony.

He would have liked altogether to have altered the arrangement of that
kind of sanctuary, the drawing-room, where Pepa kept some of her
husband's manuscripts, the furniture that he had most frequently used,
the bed on which he had died, his pens, his clothes and his weapons. And
one evening, not knowing how to dress himself up more originally than
the rest for a masked ball that stout Toinette Danicheff was going to
give as her house-warming, without saying a word to his mother, he took
down the Academician's dress, the sword and cocked hat that had belonged
to Jean Ramel, and put it on as if it had been a disguise on Shrove
Tuesday.

Slightly built and with thin arms and legs, the wide clothes hung on
him, and he was a comical sight with the embroidered skirt of his coat
sweeping the carpet, and his sword knocking against his heels. The
elbows and the collar were shiny and greasy from wear, for the Master
had worn it until it was threadbare, to avoid having to buy another, and
had never thought of replacing it.

He made a tremendous hit, and fair Liline Ablette laughed so at his
grimaces and his disguise, that that night she threw over Prince
Noureddin for him, although he had paid for her house, her horses and
everything else, and allowed her six thousand francs a month--£240--for
extras and pocket money.
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