Germaine Greer provides a foreword and Andrew Brown an illuminating introduction to Maupassant's damning indictment of the bourgeoisie. The tale is set during the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, where a good-hearted prostitute with scruples (called Butterball on account of her ample proportions) is treated with ruthless hypocrisy by her fellow 'respectable' travellers on their flight from occupied Rouen to Dieppe.