Explore "Queen Hortense" by Guy de Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They called her Queen Hortense in Argenteuil. No one ever knew why. Perhaps because she spoke firmly, like an officer giving orders. Perhaps because she was large, bony, and imperious. Perhaps because she governed a multitude of domestic animals, hens, dogs, cats, canaries, and parrots -- those animals so dear to old maids. But she neither spoiled these familiar subjects, nor addressed them with loving words, those tender puerilities which seem to slip from the lips of a woman to the velvety coat of a purring cat. She governed her beasts with authority. She ruled.
She was an old maid, one of those old maids with harsh voice, and awkward gesture, whose soul seems hard. She had always had young servants, because youth more easily adapts itself to strong wills. She never allowed contradiction from any person, nor argument, nor would she tolerate hesitation, or indifference, or idleness, or fatigue. No one ever heard her complain, or regret what was, or envy others. "To each one his share," she would say, with fatalistic conviction. She never went to church, cared nothing for the priests, scarcely believed in God, and called all religious things "stuff for mourners."