• Short Prose

• Type: Short Story
• Length: 8 page

• Found in: Clair de Lune and other stories (Short Story Collection)

The Night: A Nightmare is a short story by French author Guy de Maupassant. - AsNotedIn

I love the night with passion. I love it the way you love your country, or your mistress, with an instinctive love, a deep love, an invincible love. I love it with all my senses, with my eyes that see it, with my nostrils that breathe it, with my ears that hear the silence of it, with my whole flesh, caressed by its shadows. Larks sing in the sun, in the blue air, the warm air, the light air of clear mornings. But the owl takes refuge in the night, a black blotch that crosses the black space, and, with joy, intoxicated with the vast blackness, he lets out his cry, vibrant and sinister.

Places

• 8th Rt, Elysium, I followed them, then I turned onto Royale Street and came back to the boulevards.
• Arc de Triomphe, Paris, Paris I stopped under the Arch of Triumph to look at the avenue, the long, admirable, starry avenue, going to the heart of Paris between two lines of flame, and the stars!
• Avenue des Champs-Elysees, Paris, Paris I made it to the Champs-Elysees, where the music cafes seemed like roaring fireplaces amid the foliage. The chestnut trees looked painted, smeared with yellow light, like phosphorescent trees.
• Colonne de Juillet, Paris Up there I realized that I had never seen a night so dark, since I could not even make out the Column of July, whose wizardry wrought in gold was lost in the impenetrable darkness.
• Les Halles, Paris, Paris All alone, two patrolmen were walking near the taxi station, and on the pavement barely illuminated by the gas valves which seemed to be dying, a line of vegetable trucks was headed for Halles.
• Paris, Ile-de-France I had never before seen Paris so dead, so deserted. I pulled out my watch. It was two o'clock.