By nature independent, gay, even exuberant, seductively responsive and given to those spontaneous sallies that sparkle in the conversation of certain daughters of Paris who seem to have inhaled since childhood the pungent breath of the boulevards laden with the nightly laughter of audiences leaving theaters, Madame de Burne's five years of bondage had nonetheless endowed her with a singular timidity which mingled oddly with her youthful mettle, a great fear of saying too much, of going to far, along with a fierce yearning for emancipation and a firm resolve never again to compromise her freedom.

ˈsɑ̃] ; 5 August 1850 – 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. The story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat" 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece. On January 2 1892 Maupassant tried to commit suicide by cutting his throat and was committed to the celebrated private asylum of Esprit Blanche at Passy in Paris where he died on July 6 1893.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (French pronunciation: ​[gi d(ə) mo. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who caught in the conflict emerge changed. The story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat" 1880) is often accounted his masterpiece.