Guy de Maupassant’s achievement was the invention of a new, high-quality, commercial short story, which has something to offer to all classes of listeners. In The Relic, Henri Fontal, a young agnostic, is engaged to Gilberte who asked him to bring her a relic from his visit to Germany. He cheats by giving her a sheep bone, she discovers his dishonesty, and breaks the engagement. The poor distraught Henri writes to her uncle, the abbé Louis d’Ennemare, an old friend, to beg him to salvage at any cost (including his eventual conversion to Catholicism) his engagement with the abbé’s vivacious and very devout niece, Gilberte. Of course the abbé d’Ennemare is able to help ...