A young man pursues Yvette, the beautiful daughter of a Marquise whose salon is not quite what it appears — and discovers, slightly before she does, exactly what her mother is and what that makes her. Flaubert was Maupassant's mother's friend and made him rewrite for seven years before allowing him to publish; this long story is his cruellest about innocence, and the cruelty is in the reader's foreknowledge. Fifty-seven plates of painting by Renoir and Manet, among others, capture the parks, parlours and performers of the Paris that Yvette moves through.
