""The Purse"" is a short story that makes up part of Honore de Balzac''s epic cycle The Human Comedy. Daydreaming while working on a ladder, the painter Hippolyte Schinner accidentally falls and sustains an injury. Two neighbors -- a mother and daughter -- come to his aid, and he falls in love at first sight with the beautiful young woman, Adelaide. But over time, he begins to notice that the veneer of aristocratic gentility that the two project is not what it appears.