EVER since the shocking end of Maupassant in 1893, at the age of forty-three, after eighteen months spent in an insane asylum, the world has been anxious to know more about the causes of his fatal malady and premature death.

      For some years it was difficult to lift the veil. The mother of the dead, absorbed in her grief, was still alive, and, while always glad to talk about the fame and the writings of her son, she avoided as much as possible the discussion of the final tragedy. For her sake, those who knew and were in a position to speak remained silent. But in December, 1903, she followed her son to the grave, and since that time scholars and critics have been busy unravelling the terrible Maupassant mystery.

      Recently the results of these investigations have come out, and as far as the story of the late illness and death is concerned, we know now probably all that we shall ever know. The facts are of such a character as to convince those of us who perhaps still doubted it, that life can be more dramatic than fiction.

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      Thanks to Flaubert, who did not allow his pupil to spoil his literary talent before maturity, Maupassant was over thirty years of age before he gave up his modest position in the bureaux of the government, in Paris, in order to devote himself entirely to literature. One day, unexpectedly, he had surprised the world and at once conquered fame with a little masterpiece, "Boule de Suif." The story had been published in the "Soirées de Médan," a collective book of Zola and some younger naturalists. Then followed, for the young author, a period of ten years of the most intense production. At first Maupassant, who did not possess a very imaginative mind, drew for his stories from his former experiences in life — from the time of his boyhood in Normandy, where he had become well acquainted with those fishermen and peasants whom he depicted so perfectly; from scenes witnessed during the Franco-Prussian War, when he served as a soldier; and from his Parisian life, when he was in daily contact with the world of clerks and small employees, and also enjoyed life as a young athlete, being especially fond of rowing. But he would not forever be satisfied with what he had already seen; he wanted to see life under other aspects, and one which had remained closed to him up to that time attracted him particularly, namely, society. A good writer is always welcome in Parisian salons; Maupassant was not only well received, but his company was eagerly sought. There can be no doubt that he went there especially with a view to finding new characters for his stories, yet it cannot be denied that he yielded also to the seductions that the life of the rich can offer. He himself had become comparatively wealthy, thanks to his publications, and he could afford a good deal of luxury. But he tried to keep in mind constantly the danger of being absorbed by worldly pleasures, and so he made it a point not to take permanent abode in Paris, as do most writers. He went often to the seashore, to Etretat in Normandy, or to Houlgate, during the summer, to the Riviera during the winter, besides travelling extensively. All in all, taking into account the time devoted to society, and the amount of writing he was doing, Maupassant was leading a very strenuous life; he thought he could do this with impunity, owing to the exceptionally robust health he had enjoyed during the first thirty years of his life.

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      In the last days of September, 1891, however, he established himself at Cannes for the whole winter, because for some time he had not felt well and strong; but very few suspected that a catastrophe was so near. His mother, who was then living at Nice, and whom he visited almost daily, noticed in the first days of December some alarming symptoms of nervousness in him, but even she did not understand the seriousness of the case. The one who knew best that something was very wrong with Maupassant was his devoted valet, François (who is now a waiter in the Hôtel Terminus, of the Gare Saint Lazare, in Paris). A few days before Christmas he had been awakened one night by reports of a pistol. On entering the room, he found Maupassant shooting in the night, and by way of explanation he declared that he had heard some one scaling the wall of the garden below. The next morning François, rendered suspicious and uneasy by this odd performance, secretly removed the balls from the cartridges and replaced the weapon in the drawer where he had found it.

      Maupassant had promised his mother that he would spend Christmas eve with her; but in the morning she received a telegram which read thus: "Obligé de réveillonner aux îles Sainte Marguerite avec Mmes * * * mais je viendrai finir l'année et passer mon jour de l'an avec toi" ("Forced to celebrate Christmas eve at Sainte Marguerite, with Mmes. * * * but will come and spend New Year's eve and New Year's day with you"). Signed: Guy.

      When New Year's eve came, he did not go, however, and even on the first of January he would have stayed at home had it not been for François, who, seeing him very much depressed, succeeded in cheering him up and persuading him to drive with him to Nice. Guy arrived there in the afternoon. In the course of the dinner, he suddenly began to talk incoherently; at one time he said that by a pill which he had swallowed he had been informed of an event that was of great importance to him. Seeing his mother's dismayed look, he realized the absurdity of his words and by a strong effort succeeded in recovering his countenance. But the meal ended in an embarrassed and mournful silence. As soon as it was over, Maupassant ordered his carriage. His mother, filled with anxious forebodings, entreated him to stay and spend the night at her house; but in vain. She was never to see him again, either alive or dead. She was herself in a rather poor condition of health, which induced her family and her friends to conceal the truth until some time after all was over.

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      When he reached his house, in Cannes, Maupassant said that he felt tired, and went to his bedroom. François, who had received orders to watch him closely, begged to be allowed to remain near him overnight; but the permission was not granted.

      Thus nobody witnessed the scene that immediately followed, but we can reconstruct it easily from what we know of the circumstances before and after. Several times, previous to this crisis, Maupassant had had moments of despondency and had more than once discussed with friends the question of insanity. Dr. Frémy has told how, only a few months before the events here related, he had said to him: "Do you not believe that I shall end by becoming mad? If such were the case, my dear, you ought to tell me. There is no hesitation possible between madness and death. My choice is made beforehand." Others who knew him well have testified to having heard similar remarks from him. Now, on that fatal afternoon of the first of January, 1892, he had realized plainly that he was no longer able to control his mind, even in the presence of others. He therefore decided that the time had come to make good his pledge. He tried his revolver, but without success, since the balls had been removed. Then, fearing, probably, lest his will power might soon leave him, he seized the first weapon within reach, which happened to be a paper-knife lying on the table, and made an attempt to cut his throat. But the instrument was not sharp enough, and only made a bad wound, which bled abundantly. It must be known that ever since Maupassant had suffered from his nerves, he had lived in a superstitious terror of all physical pain, and anything that reminded him of it, especially blood. Thus, the nervous shock was such that he suddenly began to shriek madly. François came rushing in the room, and a desperate struggle followed, in which he tried in vain to disarm his master. A fit of wild madness had set in, and it was only by the herculean strength of one of the sailors of Maupassant's yacht, who had come to the rescue, that they succeeded in getting control of the patient until the doctor arrived.

      A few days later Maupassant was taken to Paris, and confined in the asylum of the famous Dr. Blanche, where he remained for eighteen months. Here he died on July sixth of the following year.

      The details concerning his confinement are heart-breaking. Many of them have appeared in print. This sort of publication seems to us to be most undesirable, both from the standpoint of ethics and from the standpoint of good taste. Therefore we omit them here altogether.

      Let us, however, recall a touching scene that took place in Cannes shortly before he was conveyed by train to Paris. He dearly loved his yacht Bel-Ami, bought with the money earned in selling his novel of the same name. His friends, secretly hoping that the sight of the boat might bring back to him once more his own mind, took him down to the harbor. "With his arms restrained in a strait-jacket, the unfortunate man was taken to the shore. Bel-Ami rocked lightly on the sea. . . . The blue sky, the balmy air, the well built lines of his beloved boat, all seemed to calm him. His aspect became gentle. . . . He looked for a long while at his ship, with an expression both melancholy and tender. . . . He moved his lips, but no sound left his mouth. While he was being taken away, he turned round several times to look again at Bel-Ami. Those who were with Guy all had tears in their eyes. And it was with tears in his eyes that a faithful friend, Joseph Primoli, told me that harrowing anecdote of the latest illness of his Maupassant." (Souvenirs sur Maupassant, Albert Lumbroso.)

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      Friends, physicians, scholars, have expressed varied opinions regarding the probable origin of Maupassant's insanity. The most recent investigations have convinced us that it would be wrong, probably, to account for it by a single cause, but that, on the contrary, several causes worked together towards the same fatal end.

      First of all, it would be difficult to deny that there were hereditary predispositions in Maupassant. Some extraordinary stories are related of Maupassant's ancestors on the maternal side, the Le Poittevin, a family from Normandy. Here is one attributed to Guy's grandfather. Near the town of Valognes is situated the feudal domain of Gonneville, an old medieval castle with a haunted room. There appears to those who sleep in this room, so runs the legend, a black sheep. So keen was the terror inspired by this haunted chamber that the most miserable of vagabonds preferred, rather than to sleep there, to take his night's rest on the stones of the roadside. M. Le Poittevin slept in this room, and the black sheep appeared to him, saying: "As long as you and your descendants preserve this domain, good fortune will remain with you." The young man bought the property of Gonneville as soon as he had gained a fairly good fortune in business in the neighborhood of Rouen.

      Here is one concerning Guy's own mother. She had just been married to M. de Maupassant. They were on their wedding trip. In visiting a church at Heidelberg she suddenly found herself alone, her husband having gone on under the guidance of the beadle. She approached a confessional, and, lifting the curtain which hung over the grating, perceived the face of a monk — a livid face, fixing sightless eyes upon her. She drew back terrified. Was it real or an illusion? Fear of insanity seized her. In the meantime the loquacious beadle was pointing out the sculpturing of the confessional; he put his hand on the door, and Mme. de Maupassant thought that if the confessional proved empty, — if she had been the sport of a delusion, — she should go mad. The door opened, and she saw, in monk's clothing, a waxen face from which time had faded the colors, giving it the appearance of a corpse.

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      Those who remember Maupassant's weird stories, like "Le Horla," "Lui," "Apparition," or his book "Sur l'eau," will recognize at once in them the reflection of the same turn of mind which appears in the anecdotes just related, — a fact which is all the more striking in a writer who had shown such strong realistic tendencies in his artistic creed before the time when his health began to decline.

      Other very grave symptoms both in Maupassant himself and his mother have been described by physicians; but it would be out of place to mention them here. Only one more thing may be said with regard to this question. Guy had a brother, Hervé, who died a few years before him of exactly the same disease (general paralysis); but this was in consequence of a sunstroke. It would seem rather difficult to attribute to mere chance the fact that these two brothers should have been affected exactly in the same way — insanity — from causes so different. Their systems must have been predisposed that way.

      But there are many reasons to believe that Maupassant might have escaped insanity, had it not been for his strenuous life. His mother was affected in the same way, but the external circumstances that brought about actual madness in her son were avoided in her case. With his brother, insanity was the result of an accident. We have pointed out before that Guy, as a young man, was unusually strong; and, being of an extremely active temperament, he scorned all advices from friends or physicians, not to overwork himself. When he came to Paris his fondness for rowing had made him adopt a régime which, as a doctor has it, "would have been too much for a young athlete at Oxford or Cambridge." But, besides rowing, he worked in his office every day, and he began to write verses and stories. And later, when he gave up rowing, he went into society life, which, as physicians tell us, is particularly trying for the nerves when one has not known it before thirty. Moreover, his literary production at that time was amazing. By and by he made another mistake in taking strong stimulants, such as cocaine, morphine, and especially ether. All this combined was bound to react within comparatively few years upon a constitution predisposed to mental trouble. The physical sufferings were gradually accompanied by fits of melancholy, strange freaks of imagination, regular hallucinations. Maupassant had exactly the same experiences as those related in some of Poe's stories, or in Musset's poetry, especially in the latter's "Nuit de Décembre." One night, among others, we are told that while sitting at his table and writing, Maupassant thought that he heard some one opening the door; he turned around and was confronted with his own person entering the room, walking towards the table, then sitting down in front of him, and proceeding to dictate his work.

      Instead of trying to avoid further experiences of the kind, Maupassant only plunged deeper into that dangerous atmosphere by making use of his disorders of the brain for his stories. With his antecedents, it would have been a miracle if insanity had been avoided.

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      And yet, as if all this was not enough, another cause still remains to be indicated which was also working in the same direction. It must be acknowledged that we have no direct information concerning the special circumstances here; but from indirect sources we are led to infer that the actual determining cause which hastened the final crisis is due to a woman, to one of those egoistic, wicked creatures of the so-called "weaker" sex, who know so well how to torture a man who has once yielded to their devilish charms.

      The odd and mysterious way in which Maupassant acted in the week previous to the breaking out of his insanity has already been told. After having promised his mother to be with her on Christmas eve, he telegraphed on the morning of that day that he was "forced" to be elsewhere, namely, at Saint Marguerite. There lived two ladies, sisters, one of whom was the heroine of Maupassant's novel "Une Vie." Nobody except the two women seems to have seen him in those days; they apparently monopolized him; not only did he visit them, but there are some indications that they went to his house also. What fatal tragedy took place finally at the îles Sainte Marguerite? What did the two dames du grand monde do with him, the man broken in health, unable to resist their wicked spell? God knows; no man has ever probed the depths of female cruelty. Our only information is this: As far as the two ladies are concerned, we are told that they left for Paris suddenly, the day after the fatal réveillon, with the first train in the morning; and although they were personally acquainted with Mme. de Maupassant, she never saw or heard anything from them since, even after Guy's death.

      As to Maupassant, on seeing his mother on the first day of January, he behaved like a man who was mad with grief but could not tell even his mother what the cause of it was. His superhuman efforts to control himself can be read, it seems, even between the lines of those words of Madame de Maupassant: "Upon arriving, Guy, whose eyes were filled with tears, kissed me with extraordinary effusion. All the afternoon we chatted upon a thousand subjects; I noticed in him nothing abnormal except a certain exaltation. It was not until later, at table, in the midst of our dinner, which we ate alone together, that I perceived that his mind was wandering."

      And this is all we know. And we still remain asking, Why? Those causes — heredity, overwork, cruelty of a woman — may satisfy the scholar, historian, psychologist, physician, but they do not satisfy us as merely human beings, who have not only to study life, but to live it. We remain pondering why the representative of a higher humankind should not be spared that most horrid fate, to have his body survive his mind? It would seem that one of the noblest aims of life would be to rise above the level not only of the animal, but of the average humanity, which is low enough — and yet, the Power that is above all human power deemed it fit to throw back, to the disgusting condition of a mere brute, just that one who had achieved with particular success the difficult and noble end! Why?