Two Friends (short story)

The story examines French bravery, German stereotypes and, unusually for Maupassant, discusses the nature and justification of war in the form of a conversation between the two protagonists.

Morissot, who is bored, hungry and depressed, is walking along the boulevard when by chance he bumps into an old friend, Monsieur Sauvage, a draper from the Rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, with whom he used to go fishing before the war.

The two old friends reminisce over several glasses of absinthe in a café, gain a laissez-passer from their officer, and walk along the river to Argenteuil, a few miles west of the city, in the no man's land between the French and Prussian lines.

The two are captured and taken to a nearby island, where a Prussian officer makes them an offer: he explains that he can legally shoot them on the spot as spies, but that he will spare their lives and let them return to Paris if they give him the password they used to get through their own defense lines.

The fact that he orders the fish to be fried alive, and that he returns calmly to smoking his pipe after the execution, enhances the image of a cold, inhuman barbarian, the antithesis of the heroic Frenchmen who refuse to betray their fellow countrymen, and pay the ultimate price for their patriotism.