Excerpt from Une Vie, and Other Stories, Vol. 5 The most robust and masculine of recent French novel ists is a typical Norman, sprung from an ancient noble family, originally of Lorraine, but long settled in the Pays de Caux. The traveler from England towards Paris, soon after leaving Dieppe, sees on his left hand, immediately beyond the station of St. Aubin, a hand some sixteenth-century house, the Chateau de Miro mesnil, on a hill above the railway. Here, surrounded by the relics of his warlike and courtly ancestors, Henri Rene Albert Guy de lviaupassant was born on the 5th of August, 1850. He was early associated with the great Norman master of fiction, Gustave F laub-ert, who perceived his genius and enthusiastically undertook the training of his intelligence. Through 1870 and 1871 the young man served in the war as a common soldier. He was somewhat slow in taking up the profession Of letters, and was thirty years Of age before he be came in any degree distinguished. In 1879 the Troisieme Theatre Francais produced a short play of his, Histoz're da Vieux Temps (an old-world Story), gracefully written in rhyme, but showing no very re markable aptitude for the stage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.