Explore "The Hairpin" by Guy De Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I will not record the name either of the country or of the man concerned. It was far, very far from this part of the world, on a fertile and scorching seacoast. All morning we had been following a coast clothed with crops and a blue sea clothed in sunlight. Flowers thrust up their heads quite close to the waves, rippling waves, so gentle, drowsing. It was hot -- a relaxing heat, redolent of the rich soil, damp and fruitful: one almost heard the rising of the sap.
I had been told that, in the evening, I could obtain hospitality in the house of a Frenchman, who lived at the end of a headland, in an orange grove. Who was he? I was still in ignorance. He had arrived one morning, ten years ago; he had bought a piece of ground, planted vines, sown seed; he had worked, this man, passionately, furiously. Then, month by month, year by year, increasing his demesne, continually fertilising the lusty and virgin soil, he had in this way amassed a fortune by his unsparing labour.