A Parisian Affair and Other Stories by Guy de Maupassant

Author:Guy de Maupassant
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141915296
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

ROSE

The two young women are practically buried beneath a layer of blossom. They have all to themselves a huge landau1 filled to the brim with bouquets and looking like a gigantic flower basket. On the front seat are two wickerwork panniers lined with white satin and full of Nice violets. On the bearskin rug covering their knees, a huge pile of roses, mimosa, stocks, marguerites, tuberoses and orange-blossom all tied with silken favours appears to crush the two delicate figures, so that from this dazzling, perfumed bed, only the shoulders and a glimpse of two bodices, one blue and one lilac, are seen to emerge.

The handle of the coachman’s whip is trimmed with anemones, the horses’ harnesses festooned with gillyflowers and the wheel-spokes with mignonette. Instead of lanterns, two enormous round bouquets stare out like a strange pair of eyes on this lumbering beast created entirely of blooms.

At a brisk trot, the landau skims along the procession route, the rue d’Antibes, preceded and followed by an accompanying flotilla of similarly garlanded floats carrying women submerged beneath seas of violets. It is the festival of flowers at Cannes.2

They reach the field of battle, the boulevard de la Fonçére, where, on either side of the immense avenue, a double row of flower-bedecked coaches weaves back and forth in an endless ribbon. Flowers are thrown from one side to the other, flying in a shower through the air, landing on fresh young faces, then swirling and falling to the ground where a crowd of urchins swarms to pick them up.

A different, dense crowd standing on the pavements is held back by mounted police who roughly boot back the over-curious, making sure none of this riff-raff mixes with the quality. Noisy but good-humoured, the onlookers watch from the sidelines. From the carriages friends call out greetings and pelt each other with a hail of roses. All eyes are drawn to an attractive carriage full of young women all dressed in Mephistophelian red. A gentleman resembling Henri IV is having the time of his life tossing back and forth an enormous bouquet he has attached to a length of elastic. The young women shield their eyes against the barrage and the men bow their heads; the elegant missile describes a graceful curve and returns to its owner, who immediately aims it at yet another target.

The two young women empty their arsenal by the handful and receive another onslaught in return. After an hour or so of exchanges they are by now a little tired. They order their coachman to take them along the coast road, the Route du Golfe Juan.

The sun disappears behind the mountain of Esterel and its long, lace-edged silhouette is etched in black against a blazing sunset. A calm, bright blue sea stretches as far as the horizon where it merges with the sky. Ships of the fleet, anchored in the middle of the bay, ride motionless on the water like a flock of hunchbacked and armour-plated beasts of the Apocalypse, crested with slender, plume-like masts, and with eyes that glow in the dark.

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