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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