All Over

Guy de Maupassant

Compte de Lormerin had just finished dressing. He cast a parting glance at the large mirror

which occupied an entire panel in his dressing-room and smiled.

He was really a fine-looking man still, although quite gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no

sign of a paunch, with a small mustache of doubtful shade, which might be called fair, he

had a walk, a nobility, a "chic," in short, that indescribable something which establishes a

greater difference between two men than would millions of money. He murmured:

"Lormerin is still alive!"

And he went into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.

or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing the writing,

selecting them, making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here,

friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind

always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced

those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?

This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple, nevertheless, without seeming

to reveal anything; but he looked at it uneasily, with a sort of chill at his heart. He thought:

"From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it."

He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two fingers, striving to

read through the envelope, without making up his mind to open it.

MY DEAR FRIEND: You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now

twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old. When I bade

you farewell, I left Paris in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my

old husband, whom you used to call "my hospital." Do you remember him? He

died five years ago, and now I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married,

for I have a daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I

informed you of her birth, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so

trifling an event.

You are still the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still

recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine with her this

evening, with the elderly Baronne de Vance your ever faithful friend, who, with

some emotion, although happy, reaches out to you a devoted hand, which you

must c1asp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.

LISE DE VANCE.

gouty, pimply baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her

in seclusion through jealousy, jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.

Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he too, had been truly loved. She familiarly

gave him, the name of Jaquelet, and would pronounce that word in a delicious fashion.

A thousand forgotten memories came back to him, far, off and sweet and melancholy now.

One evening she had called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went for a stroll

in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime;

the weather was beautiful. The fragrance from her bodice embalmed the warm air-the odor

of her bodice, and perhaps, too, the fragrance of her skin. What a divine night! When they

reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to

"My little Lise, you are exquisite."

What a charming love affair, short-lived and dainty, it had been and over all too quickly, cut

short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a baron, who had carried off his wife, and

never let any one see her afterward.

Lormerin had forgotten, in fact, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out

another so quickly in Paris, when one is a bachelor! No matter; he had kept a little altar for

her in his heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.

He rose, and said aloud : "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this evening!"

And instinctively he turned toward the mirror to inspect himself from head to foot. He

reflected: "She must look very old, older than I look." And he felt gratified at the thought of

showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her

With the curling iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show

his eagerness to see her.

The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room newly furnished was his own

portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days when he was a beau, hanging on the

wall in an antique silk frame.

He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly, and, turning

round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both hands toward him.

He seized them, kissed them one after the other several times; then, lifting up his head, he

gazed at the woman he had loved.

Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who, while she smiled,

look at me! But how handsome you have kept--and young! If I had by chance met you in the

street I would have exclaimed: 'Jaquelet!'. Now, sit down and let us, first of all, have a chat.

And then I will call my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll see how she resembles

me--or, rather, how I resembled her--no, it is not quite that; she is just like the 'me' of

former days--you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would

be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be

seated, my friend."

He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to say; he did not

know this woman--it seemed to him that he had never seen her before. Why had he come to

this house? What could he talk about? Of the long ago? What was there in common

between him and her? He could no longer recall anything in presence of this grandmotherly

face. He could no longer recall all the nice, tender things, so sweet, so bitter, that had come

to his mind that morning when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty

Ashflower. What, then, had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? That

They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled, profoundly ill at ease.

As they talked only commonplaces, awkwardly and spasmodically and slowly, she rose and

Lormerin remained bewildered as at the sight of an apparition.

"Good-day, mademoiselle"

Then, turning toward the mother:

"Oh! it is you!

In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who had vanished and

come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty- five years before. This one was

even younger, fresher, more childlike.

He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again, murmuring in her ear:

"Good-morning, Lison!"

A man-servant announced:

"Dinner is ready, madame."

"Which is the real one?"

The mother smiled again repeating over and over:

"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eyes of the young girl that he found again his

memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember,

Lison?" forgetting this white- haired lady who was looking at him tenderly.

find again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again

what had escaped from her, what this resuscitated one did not possess.

The baronne said:

"You have lost your old vivacity, my poor friend."

He murmured:

"There are many other things that I have lost!"

But in his heart, touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to life once more, like

an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.

The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar intonation, some

expression of her mother's, a certain style of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of

mind and manner which people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to

foot. All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed

anew.

"All over, Lormerin!"