La bêtise humaine (Eusèbe Martin)

A provincial father sends his twenty-one-year-old son to the capital with a modest inheritance and a string of practical, often contradictory maxims. The narrative follows the young man's arrival in the city, his naive responses, and the father's recollections of misjudgments and ironic reversals. Through episodic scenes and character sketches, the work satirically examines human folly, social pretension, and the unpredictability of fortune, contrasting rural common sense with urban manners and using humor and anecdote to expose vanity, misunderstanding, and moral ambivalence.