Explore "The Return" by Guy De Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The sea is fretting the shore with small recurring waves. Small white clouds pass rapidly across the wide blue sky, swept along like birds by the swift wind; and the village, in a fold of a valley which descends to the sea, lies drowsing in the sun. By the side of the road, at the very entrance to the village, stands the lonely dwelling of the Martin-Lévesques. It is a small fisherman's cottage with clay walls and a roof of thatch made gay with tufts of blue iris. There is a square patch of front garden the size of a pocket-handkerchief, containing onions, some cabbages, parsley, and chevril, and separated from the road by a hedge.
The man is away fishing, and his wife is sitting in front of the house, mending the meshes of a large brown net spread upon the wall like a gigantic spider's web. A little girl of fourteen is sitting near the gate in a cane chair tilted back and supported against the fence; she is mending linen, miserable stuff already well darned and patched. Another girl a year younger is rocking in her arms a tiny child still too young to walk or talk, and two mites of two and three are squatting on the ground, opposite each other, digging in the earth with clumsy fingers and throwing handfuls of dust in one another's faces.