Drama
CLASSIC
with
a story appeal
ss
i
t mele
aupassant ’s
M
e
y d assic Stor y
u
G Cl
at s
h
W en
p
p
a
h hen
w one
n o i e ve s
bel ou?
y
Adapted for Scope
by Mack Lewis
ILLUSTRATIONS BY
LISA K. WEBER
Go to Scope
Online for our
pronunciation
guide!
CHARACTERS
Circle the character you will play.
Mademoiselle Fifi, tavern maid
Women: MADAME DUPONT, MADAME
*Starred characters are major roles.
Town Crier
Conteur, MADAME Honette
*Narrators 1, 2, 3 (N1, N2, N3)
GendarmE, a police officer
Men: MONSIEUR Maufrigneuse,
*Maître Hauchecorne, a farmer
Mayor
MONSIEUR Valmont, MONSIEUR
Maître Malandain, a peasant
Peasants (read by whole class)
POITTEVIN, MONSIEUR passy
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9
AS YOU READ,
THINK ABOUT:
How can your reputation
help or harm you?
DUPONT: Fine. I’ll give you 30 centimes.
N3: Hauchecorne moves through the market, selling
this and buying that, always seeking advantage.
HAUCHECORNE: What are you selling today, Madame?
CONTEUR: Bread, day old. And chickens.
HAUCHECORNE: Why, there are better loaves for half
N1: It is market day in the French village of Goderville.
this price down the street! But I’ll trade you one franc
The bustling market is full of peasants selling wool,
and this small bag of apples for two of them hens.
fruit, meat, and other goods.
CONTEUR: Two hens? How about one hen?
N2: Maître Hauchecorne, a peasant farmer known for
N1: Hauchecorne begins hobbling away.
being a bit of a dodger, is walking through the square
CONTEUR (sighing): All right, all right, I’ll give you two,
with a cart full of goods when he sees a piece of string
but those apples better be good this time.
on the ground.
HAUCHECORNE: What’s this we’ve got here?
N3: He bends over painfully, as his body is crooked
from many hard years of farming.
N2: Hauchecorne sits in a busy tavern, tired from his
HAUCHECORNE: Shame to let a good piece of string go to
long morning of bartering. Chickens, pigeons, and legs
waste.
of mutton are sizzling on spits.
N1: He notices Maître Malandain watching.
HAUCHECORNE: Fifi, serve me up a leg of that
HAUCHECORNE (aside, to audience): What’s
delicious mutton.
he staring at? We once quibbled over the
N3: The flames from the ovens cast a lively
terms.
MALANDAIN: What are you going on about
over there?
HAUCHECORNE: Mind your own business, you
Most peasants grew
their own food on
their farms. In a good
year, they had extra
crops that they could
sell at market.
heat as Hauchecorne swaps stories with his
friends.
MAUFRIGNEUSE: Good crop of beans this
year. I stand to pocket a few francs, I think.
VALMONT: The weather favors the green
ol’ goat! (aside, to audience) He doesn’t need to see me
things, but heaven help you if you’re a wheat farmer.
stoop for something as insignificant as a piece of string.
HAUCHECORNE: Don’t mean to boast, but my wheat’s
N2: Hauchecorne tries to hide the string under his
doing just fine.
shirt, then in his trousers.
MAUFRIGNEUSE: That so? I heard your wheat was dead.
N3: Then he pretends to still be looking for something
N1: Hauchecorne lifts his hand and spits.
on the ground.
HAUCHECORNE: It’s the sacred truth.
N1: He stands up and walks through the crowd.
N2: They are interrupted by the drumbeat of the town
HAUCHECORNE: And how are you today, Madame
crier outside.
Dupont? May I interest you in some milk?
FIFI: Must be important news!
DUPONT: How old is it?
N3: They rush to the door.
HAUCHECORNE: Why, it was a fresh jug just
CRIER: It is hereby made known to all
this very morning!
persons that there was lost this morning on
DUPONT: Fresh this very morning? Like you
the road a black leather pocketbook
containing 500 francs.
said last time?
N2: Hauchecorne lifts his hand and spits on
the ground.
HAUCHECORNE: It’s the sacred truth.
10
Scholastic Scope • NOVEMBER 2013
A centime (sawnTEEM) was similar
to the penny. One
franc was worth 100
centimes.
VALMONT: Five hundred francs!
FIFI: Some unlucky fellow must have
dropped his wallet.
Both images: iStockphoto.com
price of a harness, and we are still on bad
MAUFRIGNEUSE: And some lucky fellow must have
GENDARME: Maître, the mayor would like to talk to you.
found it.
HAUCHECORNE: Well, my friends, it seems the mayor
CRIER: Whoever finds it is asked to return it to the
must need me for some important business!
mayor’s office. There will be a reward of 20 francs.
N3: The peasants roll their eyes as Hauchecorne and
N1: The diners speculate about the lost pocketbook.
the gendarme leave together.
FIFI: What’s 20 francs when you’ve got 500?
VALMONT: That wallet will never be returned.
PASSY: Shame someone would run off with it.
N2: The tavern goes silent when a gendarme enters—
N1: Hauchecorne stands uncomfortably in the middle
just as Hauchecorne takes a giant bite of mutton.
of an elegant office. The mayor, a stout, serious man,
GENDARME: Is Maître Hauchecorne here?
sits behind a sturdy desk.
HAUCHECORNE (with his mouth full): Umph, here I am.
MAYOR: Hauchecorne, you were seen this
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morning picking up a lost pocketbook.
with. Nothing but this piece of string here.
HAUCHECORNE: Me? Pick up a pocketbook?
VALMONT: String? You went grubbing in the dirt for a
MAYOR: Yes.
little old piece of string?
HAUCHECORNE: Word of honor, I never heard of it.
HAUCHECORNE: That’s right. Waste not, want not.
MAYOR: But you were seen.
MAUFRIGNEUSE: Remember when he claimed he had
HAUCHECORNE: I was seen? Who says he saw me?
50 cattle grazing on his land? It turned out to be five!
MAYOR: Monsieur Malandain, the harness maker.
PASSY: Don’t spend it all in one place, Hauchecorne.
N2: Hauchecorne remembers the piece of string and
HAUCHECORNE: But it was a piece of string! See, it was
flushes with rage. Rummaging in his pocket, he pulls
right there (pointing) in the dirt, but that ol’ bandit
out the string.
Malandain was watching. I didn’t want him to belittle
HAUCHECORNE: Ah, he saw me, the clodhopper, he saw
me, so I hid the string and went on my way.
me pick up this string.
N1: The other peasants wink at each other and laugh.
N3: The mayor frowns.
MAYOR: You will not make me believe,
Hauchecorne, that a man with a fine
N2: The next afternoon, Hauchecorne sits
reputation like Monsieur Malandain
mistook that string for a pocketbook!
N1: Hauchecorne lifts his hand and spits.
HAUCHECORNE: It’s the sacred truth,
Monsieur Mayor.
MAYOR: You looked in the mud to see if any
piece of money had fallen out.
Eyewitness error
is the number one
cause of wrongful
convictions in the
United States. How
did Malandain mistake
Hauchecorne’s
actions?
glumly in his home.
HAUCHECORNE (aside, to audience): If I had
found the pocketbook, I would not have
taken it . . . or maybe I would have, but so
would anyone else, right?
N3: Some neighbors come by.
HAUCHECORNE: How can anyone tell such lies!
HONETTE: Hauchecorne, surely you’ve heard the
MAYOR: Gendarme, bring in Monsieur Malandain.
pocketbook has been returned.
N2: Malandain enters and repeats the accusation.
CONTEUR: A fellow named Marius claims he found it in
HAUCHECORNE: Why you—
the road.
MALANDAIN: I watched you bend down in the road and
HAUCHECORNE (overjoyed): See? I told you it was all a
pick it up.
misunderstanding on account of that piece of string!
HAUCHECORNE: Of all the low-down dirty tricks—to
CONTEUR: Is that so?
ruin a man’s stellar reputation for spite.
HAUCHECORNE: What grieved me so much was not the
MALANDAIN: Stellar reputation? You? Ha!
accusation itself but the lying. Nothing so shameful as
N3: The two shout insults at each other.
to be placed under a cloud on account of a lie.
HAUCHECORNE: Search me then! Had I picked it up, I’d
FIFI: Sure, Hauchecorne. We believe you.
still have it.
N1: The gendarme searches him and finds nothing.
N2: The mayor, much perplexed, discharges them both.
MAYOR: Be warned, Hauchecorne. This is not over.
N1: The next Tuesday, urged solely by the need to clear
his name, Hauchecorne returns to the market.
week repeating what happened. I told the story at the
N3: Outside, Hauchecorne is immediately surrounded.
wine shop and the ironsmith and at church and even
MAUFRIGNEUSE: Did you return the pocketbook?
to strangers in the street. But there is something
HAUCHECORNE: Return it? Why, I never had it to begin
disturbing about the way people responded, like
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Scholastic Scope • NOVEMBER 2013
iStockphoto.com
HAUCHECORNE (aside, to audience): I spent the whole
they were laughing at me. I
must clear my name—once
and for all!
N2: Hauchecorne passes
Malandain’s shop.
MALANDAIN: Hauchecorne,
you scoundrel.
N3: Hauchecorne turns and
speaks to some farmers.
HAUCHECORNE: What’s
Malandain mean by that?
N1: One of the farmers
thumps him on the back.
POITTEVIN: You big rascal,
you. We know what game
you’re playing!
PASSY: That’s an old trick,
you old sharper. We know all
about your “piece of string”!
HAUCHECORNE: But the
pocketbook was found.
POITTEVIN: There’s one who
finds and one who reports.
PASSY: At any rate, you’re
mixed up in it.
Epilogue
N2: Hauchecorne stands for a moment, confused.
Finally, a look of understanding passes
N3: Every day thereafter, Hauchecorne,
over his face.
ashamed and indignant, proclaimed an
HAUCHECORNE: What? Are you accusing me
innocence that was impossible to prove.
of having had the pocketbook returned by
N1: Yet the more energetic his protestations,
an accomplice?
the less he was believed.
N2: He swore his innocence until his death.
MALANDAIN: Obviously!
HAUCHECORNE: It isn’t so. It was just a
piece of string!
PEASANTS: Riiiiiiight. Ha! Ha! Ha!
HAUCHECORNE (shouting): I’M INNOCENT!
Leemage/UIG/Getty Images
PEASANTS (thundering): HA! HA! HA! HA!
The French writer Guy
de Maupassant (18501893) wrote stories
that often expressed a
negative view of human
nature. (Including this
one, don’t you think?)
N3: Now it is said that on market day you can
sometimes hear a voice on the wind.
HAUCHECORNE: It was just a piece of string.
Look, here it is, Monsieur Mayor, a piece of
string. . . .
•
writing contest
Why didn’t the people of Goderville believe that Hauchecorne was innocent? Do you think
Hauchecorne got what he deserved? Answer both questions in two to three paragraphs. Use
details from the play to support your ideas. Send your response to STRING CONTEST. Five
winners will each receive Nothing But the Truth by Avi. See page 2 for details.
Get this
activity
Online
www.Scholastic.com/Scope • novemBER 2013
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