“For all that, it is God’s truth, M’sieu le Maire.  There!  On my soul’s salvation, I repeat it.”

The mayor continued: 

“After you picked up the object in question, you even looked about for some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not dropped out of it.”

The good man was choking with indignation and fear.

“How can they tell—­how can they tell such lies as that to slander an honest man!  How can they?”

His protestations were in vain; he was not believed.

He was confronted with M. Malandain, who repeated and sustained his testimony.  They railed at one another for an hour.  At his own request Maitre Hauchecorne was searched.  Nothing was found on him.

At last the mayor, much perplexed, sent him away, warning him that he would inform the public prosecutor and ask for orders.

The news had spread.  When he left the mayor’s office the old man was surrounded, interrogated with a curiosity which was serious or mocking, as the case might be, but into which no indignation entered.  And he began to tell the story of the string.  They did not believe him.  They laughed.

He passed on, buttonholed by every one, himself buttonholing his acquaintances, beginning over and over again his tale and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out to prove that he had nothing in them.

They said to him: 

“You old rogue!”

He grew more and more angry, feverish, in despair at not being believed, and kept on telling his story.

The night came.  It was time to go home.  He left with three of his neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he had picked up the string, and all the way he talked of his adventure.

That evening he made the round of the village of Breaute for the purpose of telling every one.  He met only unbelievers.

He brooded over it all night long.

The next day, about one in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm hand of Maitre Breton, the market gardener at Ymauville, returned the pocketbook and its contents to Maitre Holbreque, of Manneville.

This man said, indeed, that he had found it on the road, but not knowing how to read, he had carried it home and given it to his master.

The news spread to the environs.  Maitre Hauchecorne was informed.  He started off at once and began to relate his story with the denoument.  He was triumphant.

“What grieved me,” said he, “was not the thing itself, do you understand, but it was being accused of lying.  Nothing does you so much harm as being in disgrace for lying.”

All day he talked of his adventure.  He told it on the roads to the people who passed, at the cabaret to the people who drank and next Sunday when they came out of church.  He even stopped strangers to tell them about it.  He was easy now, and yet something worried him without his knowing exactly what it was.  People had a joking manner while they listened.  They did not seem convinced.  He seemed to feel their remarks behind his back.