5. Zola: Emile Zola (1840–1902), novelist and founder of the naturalist school of French literature. His cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougon-Macquart, includes Germinal, L’Assommoir, Nana, etc. In 1898, in a letter published as ‘J’accuse’, he campaigned vigorously and in the end successfully for a reversal of the notorious anti-Semitic Dreyfus verdict.

6. fiacre: A closed, horse-drawn carriage for hire, named after the inn, the Saint-Fiacre, which was the early depot of those vehicles in the mid-seventeenth century. Readers of Madame Bovary will remember it as being the vehicle involved in what Nabokov describes as the most erotic of all literary carriage-rides. Sex on the move, in carriages and later on trains is a theme to which Maupassant often returns.

7. To the Bois!: The Bois de Boulogne, then, as now, a favourite Parisian forest park popular for both walking and riding.

8. absinthe: A green liqueur made by the maceration and distillation of wormwood (Artemisia absinthium) with the addition of other bitter or aromatic plants such as fennel and Chinese or star anise. Consumed in French literary and artistic circles during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. First popularized by being prescribed as a febrifuge to French troops during the 1830–47 Algerian war. Later the drink was proscribed by law in France and its consumption in other countries today is limited if not by law, at least by custom.

9. Café Bignon: Smart Parisian restaurant frequented by writers, artists and journalists of the time.

10. Vaudeville: A theatre very close to the Café Bignon on the boulevard des Capucines. Later used as a term for popular variety entertainment.

A WOMAN’S CONFESSION

First published in 1882 as ‘Confessions d’une femme’.

1. that chemist: A reference to a particularly lurid murder which hit the headlines in 1882. A married woman, Gabrielle Fenayrou, was having an affair with a chemist. When her husband and father-in-law discovered this, the two men set a trap for her lover. Luring him to a house they had rented for that purpose, they murdered him and threw his body into the Seine.

COCKCROW

First published in 1882 as ‘Un coq chanta’ and dedicated to René Billotte (1846–1914), a landscape painter, an old friend of Maupassant and a member of his rowing set.

MOONLIGHT

First published in 1882 as ‘Claire de lune’.

1. his illustrious name: Marignan (Melegnano), a town to the south-east of Milan and scene of two well-known French victories: first that of François I over the Swiss in 1515, and later that of the wonderfully named Achille Barcguay d’Hilliers in 1859 over the Austrians.