The Necklace

by Guy de Maupassant

She was a pretty girl born into a family of workmen. She had no way of meeting a rich man who understood, loved and wanted to marry her. So she married a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her needs were simple because she could never afford expensive ones, but she was very unhappy. Women do not have social class: beauty makes the slum girl as good as the highest lady in the land.

She suffered endlessly, feeling that she was born for every luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its unpainted walls, second-hand chairs and ugly curtains. All these things, which other women of her class would not even have noticed, made her suffer. She imagined silent rooms, heavy with carpets, with two tall uniformed servants standing next to high wooden doors. She imagined enormous dining rooms, with expensive furniture, and small, perfumed rooms, created just for little parties of close friends, people who were famous, and that all her neighbours would be jealous of.

When she sat down for dinner at the round table, opposite her husband, who was always happy with her vegetable soup, she imagined delicious meats, shining silver, heavy plates. 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 wanted so much to be wildly attractive.

She had a rich friend, an old school friend that she refused to visit because she suffered when she returned home. She would cry whole days from hopelessness.

One evening her husband came home with a happy look, holding a large envelope in his hand.

"Here's something for you," he said.

Quickly she opened the envelope and took out a card with these words on:

"The Minister of Education and Madame Rampon invite Mr. and Mrs. Loisel on the evening of Monday, January 18th."

Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation 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 so much trouble getting it. Everyone wants one; it's very difficult, and very few invitations go to the clerks. You'll see all the really big people there."

She looked at him with furious eyes and said impatiently: "And what do you suppose I'm going to wear at that party?"

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 when he saw that his wife was beginning to cry. Two large tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes down her cheeks.

"What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" he asked.

But with an effort she replied in a calm voice, drying her wet cheeks:

"Nothing. But I haven't got a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to a friend whose wife will have a better dress than I shall."

He was heart-broken.

"Look here, Mathilde," he continued. "What's the cost of a dress that you could use on other occasions as well, something very simple?"

She thought for several seconds, adding up prices and also wondering how large a sum she could ask for without an immediate refusal from the careful clerk.

At last she replied:

"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 saved for a gun, hoping to get a little shooting next summer with some friends who went hunting birds at weekends.

Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you four hundred francs. But get a really nice dress with the money."

The day of the party came closer and Madame Loisel seemed sad and uneasy. 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 sad because I don't have any jewels to wear," she replied. "I would almost prefer not to 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 beautiful roses."

"No... there's nothing so bad as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women."

"How stupid you are!" said her husband. "Go and see Madame Forestier and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her well enough for that."

She gave a cry of delight.

"That's true. I never thought of it."

Next day she went to see her friend and told her the trouble.

Madame Forestier brought a large box to Madame Loisel, opened it, and said:

"Choose, my dear."

First she saw some bracelets, then a necklace, then a design in gold and jewels of beautiful workmanship. She tried the jewels before the mirror, unable to make up her mind. She kept on asking:

"Haven't you got anything else?"

"Look for yourself. I don't know what you'd like best."

Suddenly she discovered a wonderful diamond necklace. Her hands shook as she lifted it. She put it round her neck on her high dress and was delighted when she looked at herself.

"Could you lend me this, just this?"

"Yes, of course."

She hugged her friend and went away with her necklace. The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman there, smiling and shining with happiness. The Minister noticed her. She talked with pleasure in the victory of her beauty and her success, in a cloud of happiness.

She left about four o'clock in the morning. Since midnight her husband had been sleeping in an empty little room with three other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the coat he had brought for her to go home in, whose poverty did not match the beauty of the party-dress. She wanted to hurry away, so that she would not be noticed by the other women putting on their costly coats.

Loisel held her back.

"Wait a little. You'll catch cold outside. I'm going to get a cab."

But she did not listen to him and quickly walked down the stairs. When they were out in the street they could not find a cab; they began to look for one, shouting at the drivers they saw passing in the distance.

They walked down towards the river, shaking with cold. At last they found one of those old taxis which are only to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they were ashamed in the daylight.

It brought them to their door 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 coat covering her shoulders, to see herself once more in the mirror. But suddenly she gave 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 despair.

"I... I... I've no longer got Madame Forestier's necklace..."

"What! ... Impossible!"

They searched in her dress, in 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 party?" he asked.

"Yes, I touched it in the hall at the Ministry."

"But if you had lost it in the street, we would have heard it fall."

"Yes. Probably we would. Did you take the number of the cab?"

"No. You didn't notice it, did you?"

"No."

They stared at one another, horrified. 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 stayed in her evening clothes, too weak to get into bed, seated on a chair, without being able to think.

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 he could think of.

She waited all day long, shocked at this disaster. 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 necklace and are getting it mended. That will give us time to look about us."

She wrote.

By the end of a week they had lost all hope.

Loisel, who had aged five years, said:

"We must replace the diamonds."

Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for another necklace like the first, remembering the diamonds, both ill with worry.

In a shop at the Palais-Royal they found some diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the ones they were looking for. They were forty thousand francs. They got them for thirty-six thousand.

They asked the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they agreed 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 had eighteen thousand francs left to him by his father. He planned to borrow the rest.

He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, five hundred from another. He did business with the money-lenders. He sold the remaining years of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could pay and, horrified at the future, at the black misery about to fall on him, he went to get the new necklace and put in the jeweller's hand thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to Madame Forestier, she said to her in a chilly voice:

"You should have brought it back sooner. I might have needed it."

She did not, as her friend had worried, open the case. If she had noticed that the diamonds were different, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Wouldn't she have thought her a thief?

Madame Loisel got to know poverty. From the very first day, she played her part heroically. It must be paid off. She would pay it. She did all the housework herself. They changed their flat.

She started the heavy work of the house, the hateful jobs of the kitchen. She washed the plates, breaking her pink nails on the pots and pans. She washed the dirty sheets and shirts, and hung them out to dry; every morning she took the bin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping to get her breath. And, dressed like a poor woman, she went to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, fighting for every halfpenny of her money.

Her husband worked in the evenings at a businessman's books and often at night he did copying at two pence-halfpenny a page.

And this life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything.

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard women of poor houses. Her hair was badly done, her hands were red. But sometimes when her husband was at the office she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the party where she had been so beautiful.

What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels? Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is! How little is needed to ruin a life!

One Sunday, when she had gone for a walk to relax after the work of the week, she suddenly saw a woman who was taking a child out. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive.

Madame Loisel did not know what to feel. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her everything. Why not?

She went up to her.

"Good morning, Jeanne."

The other did not recognise her, and was surprised that a poor woman spoke to her so familiarly.

"But... Madame..." she said. "I don't know you... you must be making a mistake."

"No... I am Mathilde Loisel."

"Oh! ... my poor Mathilde, how you have changed!"

"Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last; and great sadness... and all for you."

"For me! ... How was that?"

"You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the party 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 very glad."

Madame Forestier had stopped.

"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 her happiness.

Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was a copy. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs!"