"We fancied each other and that's that. Now it's over." Georges Duroy (the protagonist of Bel Ami, Guy de Maupassant's first novel-length work), is a cad -- a social climber who literally sleeps his way to the top. Here is a young former soldier, a man fighting for social and material position in the rat race that was Paris of 1870s. Scandal, political intrigue and sexual manipulation balance beauitiful against by de Maupassant's cruel wit -- and also against his love of life. Duroy becomes a sort of male Madame Bovary -- but where Bovary's amorality brings her little but misery, Duroy's pays off. In many ways what de Maupassant tells is a cynical and amoral tale -- but there is a ring of truth about it; de Maupassant offers us an insight we had not dare forget. . . .