"My Twenty-Five Days" by Guy de Maupassant is a short story about the contents of a man's diary that another resident of the hotel where he stayed finds in a drawer.
As the narrator begins his reading of the diary, this visitor in the hotel room advises,
These notes may be of some interest to sensible and healthy persons who never leave their own homes.
The man who kept a diary has come to take the hot baths in Chatel-Guyon in order to have his liver and stomach treated, and to lose weight. But, the place where he takes the bath is silent and dull. He notes, "No one laughs here; they take care of their health." When there is dinner, people do not speak. And, although those of high social position sit together, even they do not talk to each other. The narrator himself dines alone.
When he has time, the diary writer visits the sights, which are very picturesque. Also, from his descriptions, it is apparent that he finds the countryside restorative. For, he delights in the country "although sad." He walks in the "charming" wooded valley that is "calm; so sweet, so green." In addition, he truly enjoys the fresh air.
One day in July, the man goes on an excursion to the valley of Enval where there is a narrow gorge amid impressive rock formations and a stream that inches its way through the random piles of boulders. As he moves toward this stream, he hears voices and discovers two ladies who are residing in the same hotel as he. They are seated on a rock. Approaching them, the man speaks and they respond without hesitation. After a while, the ladies accompany him back to the hotel; along the way they discover that they have some things in common.
After spending five carefree days with the two women, the man is happy and relaxed, his stomach and liver no longer troubling him. However, he observes that others frown upon his behavior:
Some persons seem to look with shocked and disapproving eyes at my rapid intimacy with the two fair widows.
When he gets weighed at the clinic, the man discovers to his delight that he has lost several pounds. Two days later, the man learns that two gentlemen have arrived to take the two women home. The ladies write him a letter, but the man is devastated, feeling completely alone. After this great disappointment in the loss of his new friends, the man enters little into his diary, writing only "Alone!" one day, and "Nothing. I am taking the treatment" on another day, suggesting renewed trouble with his stomach and liver.
The next entries are much more negative in tone than his previous ones. Now he grumbles about polluted streams in the country. Describing "an abominable sewer" which emits its rancid odor on the road in front of his hotel, he complains that kitchen workers in the hotel throw refuse into this sewer. Furthermore, he is worried about the chance of a cholera outbreak.
When he does take a pleasant walk to Chateauneuf, the man now finds something that repulses him as he observes how distorted the rheumatic patients who come there appear in their crippled walking.
One day, however, the man drives about forty-five miles to a lovely mountain village where there was once not only a natural setting, but also a natural behavior (a behavior which the man considers "logical and reasonable") exhibited among the men and the women. However, because the curé could not prevent these physical "demonstrations," the parish priest decided to make use of this behavior for the benefit of the area. He, therefore, imposed a penance upon the women for their sins after they went to confession: They had to plant a walnut tree on the common. As a result of this penance, there were multitudes of trees planted under the cover of night because the sinners did not wish to become known. After two years there was no more room on the commons of the village. Now, there are more than three thousand trees there, and these trees are referred to as the Sins of the Curé.
With cynicism the man remarks,
Since we have been seeking for so many ways of rewooding France, the Administration of Forests might surely enter into some arrangement with the clergy to employ a method so simple as that employed by this humble curé.
After these remarks the man only makes one entry; he states that he is packing his bags and will say goodbye to the charming little district, and the almost dream-like green mountain and silent valleys, the old Casino, and the vast plain of the Limagne, that seems almost illusory in its bluish mist.
Then, the diary entries end. The narrator states that he will add nothing to this "manuscript" since his impressions of the country do not agree with those of the man because he has not found the two lovely widows.
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