Guy de Maupassant was a popular French writer in the 19th century. He was one of the first writers to write short stories. Many of his stories were set during the Franco-Prussian war. His stories show the futility of war and war's effects on the innocent. Strong as Death is the love story of a lower class painter who is in love with a countess. As she grows older she fears the artist will fall in love with her beautiful daughter. The fear of growing old is timeless. An excerpt reads, "The attraction that impelled him toward this girl a little resembled those obscure yet innocent desires that go to make up part of all the ceaseless and unappeasable vibrations of human nerves. His eye of the artist, as well as that of the man, was captivated by her freshness, by that springing of beautiful clear life, by that essence of youth that glowed in her; and his heart, full of memories of his long intimacy with the Countess, finding in the extraordinary resemblance of Annette to her mother a reawakening of old feelings, of emotions sleeping since the beginning of his love, had been startled perhaps by the sensation of an awakening. An awakening? Yes. Was it that?"