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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 round her
neck!
"What is the matter with you?" demanded her husband,
already half-undressed.
She turned distractedly towards 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 the 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 jeweller 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 jeweller to jeweller, 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 jeweller not to sell it for three days
yet. And they made a bargain that he should buy it hack 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
jeweller'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 took 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 in the 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, every-
thing 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 thought of that gay evening of long ago,
of that ball where she had looked so beautiful and been so
much 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 labours of the week,
she suddenly saw 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 he familiarly addressed by this
plain goodwife, did not recognize her at all and stammered,
"But - madame! - I do not know - You must be mistaken."
"No. I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you
are changed!"
"Yes, I have had a very 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!"
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