About the book: year / Abbot Antoine Francois Prevost d'Exile lived a stormy and eventful life - he was a monk, a soldier, an adventurer. Prevost is known to modern readers as the author of the famous story “The History of the Chevalier de Grieux and Manon Lescaut.” In the shadow of this glory, the short stories of Abbot Prevost remained unnoticed for a long time, which until recently were not translated into Russian at all. But it was precisely in these short funny stories that Prevost’s passion for all kinds of adventures was most clearly reflected. These short stories are full of dynamism, there is almost no place for descriptions or author's reasoning, and the facts are presented with delightful grace. It is here that the peculiarity of “Prevost’s smile” is manifested; his irony is inherent in the plots themselves, in the barely noticeable discrepancy between the simplicity of the story and the whimsicality of the situation, in the graceful balancing on the brink of plausibility. Let the reader smile along with Abbot Prevost and rejoice that several more wonderful stories have been brought out of oblivion that can bring real pleasure to lovers of literature.