“Maitre Hauchecorne,” said he, “this early early morning regarding the Beuzeville road, you’re seen to select within the wallet lost by Maitre Houlbreque, of Manneville.”
The countryman looked over the mayor in amazement frightened already only at that suspicion which rested he knew not why on him.
“I—I picked up that wallet?”
“I swear I do not even understand any such thing about this.”
“I became seen—I? Whom saw me personally?”
“M. Malandain, the harness-maker.”
Then your man that is old, grasped, and, reddening with anger, stated:
“Ah! he saw me personally, did he, the rascal? I was seen by him picking right on up this string right right right here, M’sieu le Maire.”
And fumbling at the end of their pocket, he pulled from it the end that is little of.
However the mayor incredulously shook his mind:
“You will maybe not make me think, Maitre Hauchecorne, that M. Malandain, that is a guy whoever term is relied on, has mistaken this sequence for a wallet.”
The peasant, furious, raised their hand and spat on the floor beside him just as if to attest their good faith, saying:
“For all of that, it really is Jesus’s truth, M’sieu le Maire. There! On my heart’s salvation, it is repeated by me.”
The mayor proceeded:
“After you picked within the item under consideration, you also seemed about for many amount of time in the mud to see if a bit of cash hadn’t fallen away from it.”
The man that is good choking with indignation and fear.
“How can they tell—how can they inform such lies as that to slander a truthful guy! Just how can they?”
Their protestations had been in vain; he had been maybe maybe perhaps not believed.
He had been confronted by M. Malandain, whom repeated and sustained their 
testimony. They railed at each other for an hour or so. At their request that is own Maitre had been searched. Absolutely absolutely absolutely Nothing had been entirely on him.
At final the mayor, much perplexed, delivered him away, warning him which he would notify the prosecutor that is public require purchases.
The news headlines had spread. As he left the mayor’s workplace the man that is old surrounded, interrogated by having a curiosity that was severe or mocking, once the instance may be, but into which no indignation joined. In which he started initially to inform the tale of this sequence. They failed to think him. They laughed.
He handed down, buttonholed by every one, himself buttonholing their acquaintances, starting repeatedly their story along with his protestations, showing their pockets switched in off to show which he had absolutely absolutely nothing inside them.
They thought to him:
He expanded increasingly more mad, feverish, in despair at perhaps maybe perhaps not being thought, and continued telling their tale.
The came night. It had been time and energy to go homeward. He left with three of their next-door next-door neighbors, to who he pointed out of the destination where he had picked within the string, and all sorts of the way in which he chatted of their adventure.
That night he made the round associated with town of Breaute for the true purpose of telling every one. He came across just unbelievers.
He brooded on it all evening very long.
The day that is next about one in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm hand of Maitre Breton, the marketplace gardener at Ymauville, came back the wallet and its own articles to Maitre Holbreque, of Manneville.
This guy stated, certainly, on the road, but not knowing how to read, he had carried it home and given it to his master that he had found it.