Indicative of his relationship with money is the incident reported by the novelist Pavlos Nirvanas: when Papadiamantis started his collaboration with the newspaper "Asty", the director offered him 150 drachmas as a salary.

A hundred is enough for me"[1] He never married, and was known to be a recluse, whose only true cares were observing and writing about the life of the poor and of spiritual figures, as well as chanting at church: he was referred to as "kosmokalogeros" (κοσμοκαλόγερος, "a monk of the people").

[3] Written in his own version of the then official language of Greece, "katharevousa" (a "purist" written language heavily influenced by ancient Greek), Papadiamantis' stories provide lucid and lyrical portraits of country life in Skiathos, or urban life in the poorer neighborhoods of Athens, with frequent flashes of deep psychological insight.

His only saint, in fact, is a poor shepherd who, having warned the islanders, is slaughtered by Saracen pirates after he refuses to abandon his flock for the safety of the fortified town.

As coincidences keep piling up, she is confronted with a stark fact: her assumption that she was helping was monstrously wrong, and she gradually slips into mad torment.

She flees arrest and tries to hide in the wilderness, but drowns in the sea while trying to escape two policemen on her trail; as Papadiamantis puts it, she meets "death half-way between divine and human justice".

Even her name tells the story of women in 19th century rural Greece: her birth name, Hadoula, "tenderling", is all but forgotten; she now is the "Fragkoyannoú", i.e. the widow of Yannis Fragkos, her whole existence referenced only to the name of her late, good-for-nothing husband.