1. Paris … breathing her last: Like ‘Boule de suif’ and many others, this story is set during the Franco-Prussian war when the population of Paris was reduced to eating cats, rats and any other form of animal life they could lay their hands on.

2. uniform: Of the Garde Nationale.

3. Marante: The Ile de Colombes, setting of the present tale.

4. rue de Lorette: A street near the Gare Saint-Lazare leading from the Place Blanche to the church of Notre-Dame de Lorette. It was a street well known to Maupassant who, when he first went to Paris as a young man, lived a few hundred yards away, in the rue Moncey.

AWAKENING

First published in 1883 as ‘Réveil’.

1. coupé: In this context, a closed, four-wheeled carriage generally used for carrying two passengers.

THE JEWELS

First published in 1883 as ‘Les bijoux’.

1. rue de la Paix: Then, as now, one of the most elegant and fashionable streets in Paris. It leads from the Place de l’Opéra to the Place Vendôme.

2. rue des Martyrs: Monsieur Lantin lives in what was then the bohemian quartier of the city, up near Pigalle and Montmartre, the latter a corruption of ‘Mont des Martyrs’. As the Haussmannization of Paris drove the working class further outward towards the city limits, it became well known for its cabarets and brothels and for being the home not only of artists but also of pimps, prostitutes and pickpockets.

3. colonne de Vendôme: The massive column dedicated to Napoleon’s grande armée. Forty-four metres high, it is cast from the bronze of 1,200 captured enemy cannon.

4. Voisin’s: A few steps from the Place Vendôme, on the corner of the rue Cambon and the rue Saint-Honoré.

5. Café Anglais: On the boulevard des Italiens, this restaurant, like Voisin’s, at the end of the Second Empire boasted a superb cellar.

TRAIN STORY

First published in 1883 as ‘En voyage’.

1. Tarascon: The Bouches du Rhône area south of Avignon.

2. murderer who … passenger on this line: A large number of murders on trains had taken place in the Tarascon region between 1882 and 1883. In France generally, sufficiently alarming incidences of the crime gave rise to a largely ineffective commission into railway security at this time.

3. how beautiful … at least to us: Maupassant was highly susceptible to this kind of beauty and may well have heard the story told in the cosmopolitan milieux he was frequenting at the time chez the Comtesse Potocka and others. Later, he himself was to fall deeply under the spell of the Russian Marie Barshkitseff.

REGRET

First published in 1883.

1. Mantes: The delightfully named Mantes-la-Jolie lies on the Seine and is the administrative centre of the Seine-et-Oise.

2. écarté: See p. 306, note 19.

MINOR TRAGEDY

First published in 1883 as ‘Humble drâme’.

1. Sancy: Puy de Sancy, at 1886 metres the highest peak of the Massif du Mont-Doré in the Auvergne and the Massif Central.

2. Notre-Dame-de-Vassivière: A small chapel and place of pilgrimage west of Besse-en-Chandesse.