This is a sweet but tragic love story. Maupassant describes Miss Harriet like this: “She seemed to be preserved in a pickle of innocence, but her heart still retained something very youthful and inflammable. She loved both nature and animals with a fervor, a love like old wine fermented through age, with a sensuous love that she had never bestowed on men.” Maupassant died in 1893, short of his forty-third birthday, having penned his own epitaph: “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing.” Enjoy!