Dear friend

The novel by the master of psychological prose, Guy de Maupassant, about a young seducer shamelessly using women to achieve selfish goals and success, stands alongside Gustave Flaubert's scandalous "Madame Bovary" in terms of audacity of the theme and realism of narration. Although Maupassant, unlike his colleague and friend, was not subjected to trial and ostracism, on the contrary, he was a very successful author. The scandalous nature of his prose and the merciless verdicts that the writer passed on contemporary society for many years made critics either dismiss his "deliberate eroticism" or simply ignore it in a puritanical manner. Today, Maupassant's works, especially this novel, provide us with a very clear and bitter picture of the spiritual impoverishment of French society during the "Beautiful Era."