When he was seated at table in Jourdain's inn he again began to explain the affair. A jockey of Montivilliers cried to him:
"Come, come, old croaker, I know about your string!"
Hauchecorne stammered:
"But since it is found—the wallet?"
The other answered:
"Hold your tongue, father. One finds, another returns. I know nothing about it, but I implicate you."
The peasant was left choking. He understood at last. He was accused of having returned the wallet through an accomplice. He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh. He could not finish his dinner, and went out in the midst of mockeries.
He returned home, ashamed and disgraced, strangling with rage and confusion, so much the more overwhelmed, in that he was capable, with his Norman duplicity, of doing the very thing of which he was accused, and even boasting of it as a good stroke. Confusedly he saw his innocence impossible to prove, his chicanery being well known, and he felt himself cut to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion.
Then he commenced again to recount his adventure, lengthening each day his story, adding each time new reasonings, more energetic protestations, more solemn oaths, which he invented and arranged in his hours of solitude, his mind occupied solely with the story of the string. He was believed the less in proportion to the complication of his defense and the subtlety of his argument.
"That's the reasoning of a liar," they said behind his back.