The Necklace |
by Guy de Maupassant |
The girl was one of those pretty and charming
young creatures who sometimes are born, as if by a slip of fate, into a
family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no way of being known,
understood, loved, married by any rich and distinguished man; so she let
herself be married to a little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction. |
She dressed plainly because she could not
dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher
station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace
and charm take the place of family and birth. Natural ingenuity, instinct for
what is elegant, a supple mind are their sole hierarchy, and often make of
women of the people the equals of the very greatest ladies. |
Mathilde suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself
born to enjoy all delicacies and all luxuries. She was distressed at the
poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs,
the ugliness of the curtains. All those things, of which another woman of her
rank would never even have been conscious, tortured her and made her angry.
The sight of the little Breton peasant who did her humble housework aroused
in her despairing regrets and bewildering dreams. She thought of silent
antechambers hung with Oriental tapestry, illumined by tall bronze
candelabra, and of two great footmen in knee breeches who sleep in the big
armchairs, made drowsy by the oppressive heat of the stove. She thought of
long reception halls hung with ancient silk, of the dainty cabinets
containing priceless curiosities and of the little coquettish perfumed
reception rooms made for chatting at five o'clock with intimate friends, with
men famous and sought after, whom all women envy and whose attention they all
desire. |
When she sat down to dinner, before the round
table covered with a tablecloth in use three days, opposite her husband, who
uncovered the soup tureen and declared with a delighted air, "Ah, the
good soup! I don't know anything better than that," she thought of dainty
dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry that peopled the walls with
ancient personages and with strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy
forest; and she thought of delicious dishes served on marvellous plates and
of the whispered gallantries to which you listen with a sphinxlike smile
while you are eating the pink meat of a trout or the wings of a quail. |
She had no gowns, no jewels, nothing. And she
loved nothing but that. She felt made for that. She would have liked so much
to please, to be envied, to be charming, to be sought after. |
She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the
convent, who was rich, and whom she did not like to go to see any more
because she felt so sad when she came home. |
But one evening her husband reached home with
a triumphant air and holding a large envelope in his hand. |
"There," said he, "there is
something for you." |
She tore the paper quickly and drew out a
printed card which bore these words: |
The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame
Georges Ramponneau |
Instead of being delighted, as her husband had
hoped, she threw the invitation on the table crossly, muttering: |
"What do you wish me to do with
that?" |
"Why, my dear, I thought you would be
glad. You never go out, and this is such a fine opportunity. I had great
trouble to get it. Every one wants to go; it is very select, and they are not
giving many invitations to clerks. The whole official world will be there." |
She looked at him with an irritated glance and
said impatiently: |
"And what do you wish me to put on my
back?" |
He had not thought of that. He stammered: |
"Why, the gown you go to the theatre in.
It looks very well to me." |
He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife
was weeping. Two great tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward
the corners of her mouth. |
"What's the matter? What's the
matter?" he answered. |
By a violent effort she conquered her grief
and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks: |
"Nothing. Only I have no gown, and,
therefore, I can't go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose
wife is better equipped than I am." |
He was in despair. He resumed: |
"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much
would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other
occasions--something very simple?" |
She reflected several seconds, making her
calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on
herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical
clerk. |
Finally she replied hesitating: |
"I don't know exactly, but I think I
could manage it with four hundred francs." |
He grew a little pale, because he was laying
aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next
summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks
there of a Sunday. |
But he said: |
"Very well. I will give you four hundred
francs. And try to have a pretty gown." |
The day of the ball drew near and Madame
Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her frock was ready, however. Her husband
said to her one evening: |
"What is the matter? Come, you have
seemed very queer these last three days." |
And she answered: |
"It annoys me not to have a single piece
of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on. I shall look
poverty-stricken. I would almost rather not go at all." |
"You might wear natural flowers,"
said her husband. "They're very stylish at this time of year. For ten
francs you can get two or three magnificent roses." |
She was not convinced. |
"No; there's nothing more humiliating
than to look poor among other women who are rich." |
"How stupid you are!" her husband
cried. "Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend
you some jewels. You're intimate enough with her to do that." |
She uttered a cry of joy: |
"True! I never thought of it." |
The next day she went to her friend and told
her of her distress. |
Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a
mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to
Madame Loisel: |
"Choose, my dear." |
She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl
necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious stones, of admirable
workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and
could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back. She kept
asking: |
"Haven't you any more?" |
"Why, yes. Look further; I don't know
what you like." |
Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin box,
a superb diamond necklace, and her heart throbbed with an immoderate desire.
Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it round her throat, outside
her high-necked waist, and was lost in ecstasy at her reflection in the
mirror. |
Then she asked, hesitating, filled with anxious
doubt: |
"Will you lend me this, only this?" |
"Why, yes, certainly." |
She threw her arms round her friend's neck,
kissed her passionately, then fled with her treasure. |
The night of the ball arrived. Madame Loisel
was a great success. She was prettier than any other woman present, elegant,
graceful, smiling and wild with joy. All the men looked at her, asked her
name, sought to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wished to
waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself. |
She danced with rapture, with passion,
intoxicated by pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in the
glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness comprised of all this
homage, admiration, these awakened desires and of that sense of triumph which
is so sweet to woman's heart. |
She left the ball about four o'clock in the
morning. Her husband had been sleeping since midnight in a little deserted
anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying the ball. |
He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had
brought, the modest wraps of common life, the poverty of which contrasted
with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this and wished to escape so as
not to be remarked by the other women, who were enveloping themselves in
costly furs. |
Loisel held her back, saying: "Wait a
bit. You will catch cold outside. I will call a cab." |
But she did not listen to him and rapidly
descended the stairs. When they reached the street they could not find a
carriage and began to look for one, shouting after the cabmen passing at a
distance. |
They went toward the Seine in despair,
shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those ancient
night cabs which, as though they were ashamed to show their shabbiness during
the day, are never seen round Paris until after dark. |
It took them to their dwelling in the Rue des
Martyrs, and sadly they mounted the stairs to their flat. All was ended for
her. As to him, he reflected that he must be at the ministry at ten o'clock
that morning. |
She removed her wraps before the glass so as
to see herself once more in all her glory. But suddenly she uttered a cry.
She no longer had the necklace around her neck! |
"What is the matter with you?"
demanded her husband, already half undressed. |
She turned distractedly toward him. |
"I have--I have--I've lost Madame
Forestier's necklace," she cried. |
He stood up, bewildered. |
"What!--how? Impossible!" |
They looked among the folds of her skirt, of
her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere, but did not find it. |
"You're sure you had it on when you left
the ball?" he asked. |
"Yes, I felt it in the vestibule of the
minister's house." |
"But if you had lost it in the street we
should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab." |
"Yes, probably. Did you take his
number?" |
"No. And you--didn't you notice it?" |
"No." |
They looked, thunderstruck, at each other. At
last Loisel put on his clothes. |
"I shall go back on foot," said he,
"over the whole route, to see whether I can find it." |
He went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her
ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without any fire,
without a thought. |
Her husband returned about seven o'clock. He
had found nothing. |
He went to police headquarters, to the
newspaper offices to offer a reward; he went to the cab
companies--everywhere, in fact, whither he was urged by the least spark of
hope. |
She waited all day, in the same condition of
mad fear before this terrible calamity. |
Loisel returned at night with a hollow, pale
face. He had discovered nothing. |
"You must write to your friend,"
said he, "that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you
are having it mended. That will give us time to turn round." |
She wrote at his dictation. |
At the end of a week they had lost all hope.
Loisel, who had aged five years, declared: |
"We must consider how to replace that
ornament." |
The next day they took the box that had
contained it and went to the jeweler whose name was found within. He
consulted his books. |
"It was not I, madame, who sold that
necklace; I must simply have furnished the case." |
Then they went from jeweler to jeweler,
searching for a necklace like the other, trying to recall it, both sick with
chagrin and grief. |
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a
string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost. It
was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six. |
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for
three days yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it back for
thirty-four thousand francs, in case they should find the lost necklace
before the end of February. |
Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs
which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest. |
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of
one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave
notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers and all the race of
lenders. He compromised all the rest of his life, risked signing a note
without even knowing whether he could meet it; and, frightened by the trouble
yet to come, by the black misery that was about to fall upon him, by the
prospect of all the physical privations and moral tortures that he was to
suffer, he went to get the new necklace, laying upon the jeweler's counter
thirty-six thousand francs. |
When Madame Loisel took back the necklace Madame
Forestier said to her with a chilly manner: |
"You should have returned it sooner; I
might have needed it." |
She did not open the case, as her friend had
so much feared. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have
thought, what would she have said? Would she not have taken Madame Loisel for
a thief? |
Thereafter Madame Loisel knew the horrible
existence of the needy. She bore her part, however, with sudden heroism. That
dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their servant;
they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof. |
She came to know what heavy housework meant
and the odious cares of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, using her dainty
fingers and rosy nails on greasy pots and pans. She washed the soiled linen,
the shirts and the dishcloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the
slops down to the street every morning and carried up the water, stopping for
breath at every landing. And dressed like a woman of the people, she went to
the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining,
meeting with impertinence, defending her miserable money, sou by sou. |
Every month they had to meet some notes, renew
others, obtain more time. |
Her husband worked evenings, making up a
tradesman's accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five
sous a page. |
This life lasted ten years. |
At the end of ten years they had paid
everything, everything, with the rates of usury and the accumulations of the
compound interest. |
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become
the woman of impoverished households--strong and hard and rough. With frowsy
hair, skirts askew and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor
with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the
office, she sat down near the window and she thought of that gay evening of
long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so admired. |
What would have happened if she had not lost
that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How strange and changeful is life! How
small a thing is needed to make or ruin us! |
But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in
the Champs Elysees to refresh herself after the labors of the week, she
suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier,
still young, still beautiful, still charming. |
Madame Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to
her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all about
it. Why not? |
She went up. |
"Good-day, Jeanne." |
The other, astonished to be familiarly
addressed by this plain good-wife, did not recognize her at all and
stammered: |
"But--madame!--I do not know--You must
have mistaken." |
"No. I am Mathilde Loisel." |
Her friend uttered a cry. |
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are
changed!" |
"Yes, I have had a pretty hard life, since
I last saw you, and great poverty--and that because of you!" |
"Of me! How so?" |
"Do you remember that diamond necklace
you lent me to wear at the ministerial ball?" |
"Yes. Well?" |
"Well, I lost it." |
"What do you mean? You brought it
back." |
"I brought you back another exactly like
it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it. You can understand that it
was not easy for us, for us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am
very glad." |
Madame Forestier had stopped. |
"You say that you bought a necklace of
diamonds to replace mine?" |
"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They
were very similar." |
And she smiled with a joy that was at once
proud and ingenuous. |
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her
hands. |
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was
paste! It was worth at most only five hundred francs!" |