Publisher Description
A peasant attending the market in the neighboring town stoops to pick up a piece of string from the road. Later that day, he is maliciously accused of picking up a lost pocketbook containing five hundred francs and some valuable business papers. Although he is innocent of the charge, and the pocketbook is later handed in to the mayor by the person who actually found it, the taint of the accusation remains. The more the man protests his innocence, the less he is believed.
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About Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) was a popular nineteenth-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. A protégé of Flaubert, his stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some three hundred short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse.