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Introduction by the translator In the early hours of 2 January 1892, sensing the approach of insanity, the renowned French writer Guy de Maupassant attempted suicide There then followed for the sick man long months of confinement in Passy at the private clinic of the respected Dr Blanche, the conclusion of which was his death on 6 July 1893, overcome by his illness, a syphilitic disease of the nervous system   Numerous were the columnists following the course of the writer’s demise who sought to identify signs of madness in his works Even before he had died the newspaper Le Figaro declared: ‘Maupassant has fallen victim to the intensity of his own sensations He described and analysed the madness long before the dreadful sickness overcame him’ Enthusiastically the salons fed the controversy Some maintained that the frequent evocation of alienation in Maupassant’s writings resulted in the development of his ‘general paralysis’, whilst others continued to believe that the weakened author, suffering from writers block, nevertheless managed to preserve some inspiration from the scoria of his illness In the ‘Letter of a Madman’ which was first published in Le Gil Blas in 1885, Maupassant, or ‘Maufrigneuse’ as he mysteriously signs himself (curiously recalling Hölderlin’s use of the name ‘Scardanelli’ during his own ‘madness’), left behind a text largely ignored until after his death, which is now regarded as one of the founding elements for the myth surrounding the famous short story ‘Le Horla’ The scene of the blurred reflection in the mirror is repeated in the story written two years later Maupassant’s perceived ‘being’, which lived outside of his self, became an evil alter-ego as illness encroached upon his faculties and resulted in acute paranoid delusions and a virtual delirium of the senses   His ‘letter’ can be seen as another fascinating fragment wrested from a journey of no return which unknowingly predestines studies into the suppressed nature of the unconscious by Freud in the following century Furthermore one cannot help but