Quality noveliste Maupassant being well established, this book is just out for the gallery deeply human characters in their vicissitudes. It highlights, sometimes crudely, even pessimism, cynicism so dear to Schopenhauer, which he gladly shared some views (in this register must read "bed 29"). The blackness of some portraits however should not obscure the exhilarating side of a brilliant and efficient mechanical: the new flagship of the book (tallow Ball) is a condensed, like a Balzac sometimes (Conquering Power, the Goriot), of the human comedy. Few writers who reach this dimension painter of souls, engaged with his time, with such efficiency and such accuracy.
