Pierre and Jean, with Yvette

Two short novels by Maupassant, both about a family secret that everyone can see. Pierre and Jean (1888): a Le Havre doctor works out why an old friend of the family has left his fortune to his younger brother alone. Yvette (1884): the daughter of a Paris courtesan discovers what her mother's salon is, and what she herself is expected to become. Both are given here complete. A hundred plates of French painting, from Boudin and Monet to Degas, follow the novels' own waters and harbours across the century.