Alien Hearts

April 13, 2009
Eminent translator Howard gives a leavened, modern feel to Maupassant's weary tale of a young aristocratic loser infatuated with an on-the-rise Parisian salon hostess. André Mariolle, a rich, unmarried 37-year-old nobody, is introduced into the artistic salon of the wealthy young widow Madame Michèle de Burne and falls in love with the pretty hostess, a fiercely independent, utterly self-absorbed but intelligent coquette who is bent on attracting a cadre of slavish, brilliant admirers. A thoroughly “modern” woman, Madame de Burne encourages André's advances only insofar as they proceed discreetly; however, André is head over heels. She gives herself to him but remains emotionally aloof, leading to André's self-exile from Paris and his hiring of a comely girl as his domestic servant-cum-mistress in the wrong-headed hope of “curing” himself. Maupassant draws out Andre's tale of woe, a vehement meditation on feminine egotism, in dire speculations.