Guy de Maupassant
The Necklace
She was one of those pretty and charming girls
born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a
family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no
expectations, no means of getting known,
understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth
and distinction; and she let herself be married off to
a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes
were simple because she had never been able to
afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though
she had married beneath her; for women have no
caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm
serving them for birth or family, their natural
delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness
of wit, are their only mark of rank, and put the
slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the
land.
She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for
every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the
poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn
chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which
other women of her class would not even have
been aware, tormented and insulted her. The sight
of the little Breton girl who came to do the work in
her little house aroused heart-broken regrets and
hopeless dreams in her mind. She imagined silent
antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by
torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall
footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-
chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove.
She imagined vast saloons hung with antique silks,
exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless
ornaments, and small, charming, perfumed rooms,
created just for little parties of intimate friends,
men who were famous and sought after, whose
homage roused every other woman's envious
longings.
When she sat down for dinner at the round
table covered with a three-days-old cloth, opposite
her husband, who took the cover off the soup-
tureen, exclaiming delightedly: "Aha! Scotch broth!
What could be better?" she imagined delicate
meals, gleaming silver, tapestries peopling the walls
with folk of a past age and strange birds in faery
forests; she imagined delicate food served in
marvellous dishes, murmured gallantries, listened
to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the
rosy flesh of trout or wings of asparagus chicken.
She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And
these were the only things she loved; she felt that
she was made for them. She had longed so eagerly
to charm, to be desired, to be wildly attractive and
sought after.
She had a rich friend, an old school friend
whom she refused to visit, because she suffered so
keenly when she returned home. She would weep
whole days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery.
*
One evening her husband came home with an
exultant air, holding a large envelope in his hand.
"Here's something for you," he said.
Swiftly she tore the paper and drew out a
printed card on which were these words:
"The Minister of Education and Madame
Ramponneau request the pleasure of the company
of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry on
the evening of Monday, January the 18th."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband
hoped, she flung the invitation petulantly across
the table, murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with this?"
"Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You
never go out, and this is a great occasion. I had
tremendous trouble to get it. Every one wants one;
it's very select, and very few go to the clerks. You'll
see all the really big people there."
She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said
impatiently: "And what do you suppose I am to
wear at such an affair?"
He had not thought about it; he stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks
very nice, to me . . ."
He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss when
he saw that his wife was beginning to cry. Two large
tears ran slowly down from the corners of her eyes
towards the corners of her mouth.
"What's the matter with you? What's the matter
with you?" he faltered.
But with a violent effort she overcame her grief
and replied in a calm voice, wiping her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I haven't a dress and so I can't
go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend
of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I
shall."
He was heart-broken.
"Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What
would be the cost of a suitable dress, which you
could use on other occasions as well, something
very simple?"
She thought for several seconds, reckoning up
prices and also wondering for how large a sum she
could ask without bringing upon herself an
immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror
from the careful-minded clerk.
At last she replied with some hesitation:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it
on four hundred francs."
He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the
amount he had been saving for a gun, intending to
get a little shooting next summer on the plain of
Nanterre with some friends who went lark-shooting
there on Sundays.
Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you
four hundred francs. But try and get a really nice
dress with the money."
The day of the party drew near, and Madame
Loisel seemed sad, uneasy and anxious. Her dress
was ready, however. One evening her husband said
to her:
"What's the matter with you? You've been very
odd for the last three days."
"I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels,
not a single stone, to wear," she replied. "I shall
look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not
go to the party."
"Wear flowers," he said. "They're very smart at
this time of the year. For ten francs you could get
two or three gorgeous roses."
She was not convinced.
"No . . . there's nothing so humiliating as
looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women."
"How stupid you are!" exclaimed her husband.
"Go and see Madame Forestier and ask her to lend
you some jewels. You know her quite well enough
for that."
She uttered a cry of delight.
"That's true. I never thought of it."
Next day she went to see her friend and told her
her trouble.
Madame Forestier went to her dressing-table,
took up a large box, brought it to Madame Loisel,
opened it, and said:
"Choose, my dear."
First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl
necklace, then a Venetian cross in gold and gems,
of exquisite workmanship. She tried the effect of
the jewels before the mirror, hesitating, unable to
make up her mind to leave them, to give them up.
She kept on asking:
"Haven't you anything else?"
"Yes. Look for yourself. I don't know what you
would like best."
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin case, a
superb diamond necklace; her heart began to beat
covetously. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. She
fastened it round her neck, upon her high dress,
and remained in ecstasy at sight of herself.
Then, with hesitation, she asked in anguish:
"Could you lend me this, just this alone?"
"Yes, of course."
She flung herself on her friend's breast,
embraced her frenziedly, and went away with her
treasure. The day of the party arrived. Madame
Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman
present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above
herself with happiness. All the men stared at her,
inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to
her. All the Under-Secretaries of State were eager to
waltz with her. The Minister noticed her.
She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with
pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the
triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success,
in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal
homage and admiration, of the desires she had
aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to
her feminine heart.
She left about four o'clock in the morning. Since
midnight her husband had been dozing in a
deserted little room, in company with three other
men whose wives were having a good time. He
threw over her shoulders the garments he had
brought for them to go home in, modest everyday
clothes, whose poverty clashed with the beauty of
the ball-dress. She was conscious of this and was
anxious to hurry away, so that she should not be
noticed by the other women putting on their costly
furs.
Loisel restrained her.
"Wait a little. You'll catch cold in the open. I'm
going to fetch a cab."
But she did not listen to him and rapidly
descended the staircase. When they were out in the
street they could not find a cab; they began to look
for one, shouting at the drivers whom they saw
passing in the distance.
They walked down towards the Seine, desperate
and shivering. At last they found on the quay one
of those old nightprowling carriages which are only
to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they were
ashamed of their shabbiness in the daylight.
It brought them to their door in the Rue des
Martyrs, and sadly they walked up to their own
apartment. It was the end, for her. As for him, he
was thinking that he must be at the office at ten.
She took off the garments in which she had
wrapped her shoulders, so as to see herself in all
her glory before the mirror. But suddenly she
uttered a cry. The necklace was no longer round
her neck!
"What's the matter with you?" asked her
husband, already half undressed.
She turned towards him in the utmost distress.
"I . . . I . . . I've no longer got Madame
Forestier's necklace. . . ."
He started with astonishment.
"What! . . . Impossible!"
They searched in the folds of her dress, in the
folds of the coat, in the pockets, everywhere. They
could not find it.
"Are you sure that you still had it on when you
came away from the ball?" he asked.
"Yes, I touched it in the hall at the Ministry."
"But if you had lost it in the street, we should
have heard it fall."
"Yes. Probably we should. Did you take the
number of the cab?"
"No. You didn't notice it, did you?"
"No."
They stared at one another, dumbfounded. At
last Loisel put on his clothes again.
"I'll go over all the ground we walked," he said,
"and see if I can't find it."
And he went out. She remained in her evening
clothes, lacking strength to get into bed, huddled
on a chair, without volition or power of thought.
Her husband returned about seven. He had
found nothing.
He went to the police station, to the
newspapers, to offer a reward, to the cab
companies, everywhere that a ray of hope impelled
him.
She waited all day long, in the same state of
bewilderment at this fearful catastrophe.
Loisel came home at night, his face lined and
pale; he had discovered nothing.
"You must write to your friend," he said, "and
tell her that you've broken the clasp of her necklace
and are getting it mended. That will give us time to
look about us."
She wrote at his dictation.
*
By the end of a week they had lost all hope.
Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
"We must see about replacing the diamonds."
Next day they took the box which had held the
necklace and went to the jewellers whose name was
inside. He consulted his books.
"It was not I who sold this necklace, Madame; I
must have merely supplied the clasp."
Then they went from jeweller to jeweller,
searching for another necklace like the first,
consulting their memories, both ill with remorse
and anguish of mind.
In a shop at the Palais-Royal they found a string
of diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the
one they were looking for. It was worth forty
thousand francs. They were allowed to have it for
thirty-six thousand.
They begged the jeweller not to sell it for three
days. And they arranged matters on the
understanding that it would be taken back for
thirty-four thousand francs, if the first one were
found before the end of February.
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs left to
him by his father. He intended to borrow the rest.
He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one
man, five hundred from another, five louis here,
three louis there. He gave notes of hand, entered
into ruinous agreements, did business with usurers
and the whole tribe of money-lenders. He
mortgaged the whole remaining years of his
existence, risked his signature without even
knowing if he could honour it, and, appalled at the
agonising face of the future, at the black misery
about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every
possible physical privation and moral torture, he
went to get the new necklace and put down upon
the jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to
Madame Forestier, the latter said to her in a chilly
voice:
"You ought to have brought it back sooner; I
might have needed it."
She did not, as her friend had feared, open the
case. If she had noticed the substitution, what
would she have thought? What would she have
said? Would she not have taken her for a thief?
*
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of
abject poverty. From the very first she played her
part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off.
She would pay it. The servant was dismissed. They
changed their flat; they took a garret under the
roof.
She came to know the heavy work of the house,
the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the
plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse
pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the
dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung
them out to dry on a string; every morning she
took the dustbin down into the street and carried
up the water, stopping on each landing to get her
breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to
the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket
on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every
wretched halfpenny of her money.
Every month notes had to be paid off, others
renewed, time gained.
Her husband worked in the evenings at putting
straight a merchant's accounts, and often at night
he did copying at twopence-halfpenny a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years everything was paid off,
everything, the usurer's charges and the
accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had
become like all the other strong, hard, coarse
women of poor households. Her hair was badly
done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She
spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all
over the floor when she scrubbed it. But
sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she
sat down by the window and thought of that
evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been
so beautiful and so much admired.
What would have happened if she had never
lost those jewels. Who knows? Who knows? How
strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to
ruin or to save!
One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along
the Champs-Elysees to freshen herself after the
labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a
woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It
was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful,
still attractive.
Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion.
Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now
that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?
She went up to her.
"Good morning, Jeanne."
The other did not recognise her, and was
surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a
poor woman.
"But . . . Madame . . ." she stammered. "I don't
know . . . you must be making a mistake."
"No . . . I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh! . . . my poor Mathilde, how you have
changed! . . ."
"Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you
last; and many sorrows . . . and all on your
account."
"On my account! . . . How was that?"
"You remember the diamond necklace you lent
me for the ball at the Ministry?"
"Yes. Well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"How could you? Why, you brought it back."
"I brought you another one just like it. And for
the last ten years we have been paying for it. You
realise it wasn't easy for us; we had no money. . . .
Well, it's paid for at last, and I'm glad indeed."
Madame Forestier had halted.
"You say you bought a diamond necklace to
replace mine?"
"Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very
much alike."
And she smiled in proud and innocent
happiness.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two
hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation.
It was worth at the very most five hundred
francs! . . . "
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