Sur l'eau (On the Water)

Guy de Maupassant's 1888 travel journal, narrating a Mediterranean yachting cruise in prose mixing description with digressive personal essay. Arkadina reads a few lines from it aloud to Dorn in Act Two, then dismisses the passage as "uninteresting and untrue" and closes the book -- a small, characteristic gesture of restless impatience just before she turns to anxious questions about her son.