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.

On Tuesday of the following week he went to market at Goderville,
prompted solely by the need of telling his story.

Malandain, standing on his doorstep, began to laugh as he saw him pass.
Why?

He accosted a farmer of Criquetot, who did not let hire finish, and
giving him a punch in the pit of the stomach cried in his face: "Oh, you
great rogue!" Then he turned his heel upon him.

Maitre Hauchecorne remained speechless and grew more and more uneasy. Why
had they called him "great rogue"?

When seated at table in Jourdain's tavern he began again to explain the
whole affair.

A horse dealer of Montivilliers shouted at him:

"Get out, get out, you old scamp! I know all about your old string."

Hauchecorne stammered:

"But since they found it again, the pocketbook!"

But the other continued:

"Hold your tongue, daddy; there's one who finds it and there's another
who returns it. And no one the wiser."

The farmer was speechless. He understood at last. They accused him of
having had the pocketbook brought back by an accomplice, by a
confederate.

He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh.

He could not finish his dinner, and went away amid a chorus of jeers.

He went home indignant, choking with rage, with confusion, the more cast
down since with his Norman craftiness he was, perhaps, capable of having
done what they accused him of and even of boasting of it as a good trick.
He was dimly conscious that it was impossible to prove his innocence, his
craftiness being so well known. He felt himself struck to the heart by
the injustice of the suspicion.

He began anew to tell his tale, lengthening his recital every day, each
day adding new proofs, more energetic declarations and more sacred oaths,
which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, for his
mind was entirely occupied with the story of the string. The more he
denied it, the more artful his arguments, the less he was believed.

"Those are liars proofs," they said behind his back.

He felt this. It preyed upon him and he exhausted himself in useless
efforts.

He was visibly wasting away.

Jokers would make him tell the story of "the piece of string" to amuse
them, just as you make a soldier who has been on a campai