France

About the Author Guy de Maupassant

was a popular 19th century French writer and considered
one of the fathers of the modern short story. His stories
are characterized by their economy of style and
efficient, effortless denouemeni Many of the stories are
set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870's and
several describe the futility of war and the innocent
civilians who caught in the conflict, emerge changed.

The Necklace Guy

de Maupassant

Che was one of those pretty and charming girls

who are
sometimes, as if by a mistake of destiny, born into a
family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no
means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by
any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be
married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public
instruction.
She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but
she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from
her proper station, since with women there is neither caste
 nor rank : and beauty, grace, and charm act instead of
family and birth. Natural fineness, instinct for what is
elegant, suppleness of wit are the sole hierarchy, and make
women of the people the equal of the greatest ladies.
She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all
the delicacies and all the luxuries. She suffered from the
poverty of her dwelling, from the wretched look of the
walls, from the worn out chairs, from the ugliness of the
curtains. All those things, which another woman of her rank
would never even have be conscious, tortured her and
made her angry. The sight of little Breton peasant who
did her dreams. She thought of silent antechambers hung
with oriental tapestry, lit by tall bror candelabra, and of the
two great footmen in knee breeches sleep in the big
armchairs, made drowsy by the heavy was of the hot-
air stove. She thought of the long salons fitted up
eeches who
y warmth fed up with
ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities,
and the coquettish perfumed boudoirs made for talks 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 tablecloth three days old, opposite her
husband, who uncovered the soup tureen and declared
with an enchanted air, "Ah, the good pot-au-feu! I don't
know anything better than that," she thought of dainty
dinners, of shining silverware, of the tapestry which
peopled the walls with ancient personages and with
strange birds flying in the midst of a fairy forest; and the
thought of delicious dishes served on marvelous plates,
and of the whispered gallantries which you listen to with a
sphinxlike smile, while you are eating the pink flesh of a
trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved
nothing but that; she felt made for that. She would have
liked to please, to be invited, 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 and see
anymore, because she suffered so much when she came
back.
But one evening, her husband returned home with a
triumphant air, and holding a large envelope in his
hand.
“There," said he. “Here is something
for you."
She tore the paper sharply, and drew out a printed
card which bore these words:
"The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. George
Ramponeau request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel's
company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday
evening, January 18."
Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped,
she threw the invitation on the table with disdain,
murmuring:
"What do you want me to do with
that?"
“But, my dear, I thought you would be glad. You
never go out, and this is a fine opportunity. I had awful
trouble to get it. Everyone 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 eye, and she
said impatiently: "And what do you want me to put
on my back?"
He had not thought of that; he
stammered.
"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very
well to me."
He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was crying
Two great tears descended slowly from the corners of
her eyes toward the corners of her mouth. He
stuttered:
"What's the matter? What's the
matter?"
But by violent effort, she had conquered her grief,
and she replied, with a calm voice, while she
wiped her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I have no dress and therefore I can't you
 this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife
is better equipped than I."
He was in despair. He
resumed:
"Come, let us see, Mathilde. How much would it costa
suitable dress, 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 frightened exclamation from the economical
clerk.
Finally, she replied,
hesitantly:
"I don't know exactly, but I think I could manage it
with 400 francs."
He had grown 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 down there, on a Sunday.
But he
said:
"All right. I will give you 400 francs. And try to
have a pretty dress."
The day of the ball drew near, and Mme. Loisel
 seemed sad, uneasy, anxious. Her dress was
ready, however. Her husband said to her one
evening:
"What is the matter? Come, you've been so queer
these three days."
And she
answered:
"It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a
single stone, nothing to put on. I shall look like
distress. I should almost rather not go at all."
He
resumed
"You might wear natural flowers. It's very stylish at
this time of the year. For 10 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."
But her husband
cried.
"How stupid you are! Go look up your friend Mme.
Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels.
You're quite thick enough with her to do that."
She uttered a cry of joy: "It's true. I never thought
of it." The next day she went to her friend and
told of her distress.
Mme. Forestier went to a wardrobe with a glass
door, took out a large jewel box, brought it back,
opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel:
"Choose, my
dear."

then a Venetian cross, gold and precious stones of

admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments
before the glass, hesitated, could not make up her
mind to part with them or to give them back. She kept
asking:
“Haven't you anymore?" "Why, yes.
Look, I don't know what you like." .

superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart

began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her
hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it
around her throat, outside her high-necked dress,
and remained lost in ecstasy at bthe sight of
herself.

"Can you lend me that, only

 that?" "Why, yes,
certainly."
She sprung upon the neck of her friend, kissed her
passionately, then fled with her treasure.
The day of the ball arrived. Mme Loisel made a great
successe She was prettier than all of them, elegant,
gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked at
her, asked her name endeavoured to be introduced. All the
men attaches of the Cabinet wanted to waltz with her. She
was remarked by the minister himself
She danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk
with pleasure, forgetting all in the triumph of her beauty, in
the glory of her success, in a sort of a cloud of happiness
composed of all this homage, of all this admiration, of all
these awakened desires, and of that sense of complete
victory which is so sweet to a woman's heart
She went away 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 having a very good time. He threw over her shoulders
the wraps which he had brought, modest wraps of
common life, whose poverty contrasted with the
elegance of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to
escape so as not to be remarked by the other women,
who were enveloping themselves in costly furs.
 Loisel held her back. "Wait a bit. You will catch
cold outside. I will go and call a cab."
But she did not listen to him, and rapidly descended
the stairs. When they were in the street they did not find a
carriage; and they began to look for one, shouting after
the cab-men whom they saw passing by at a distance,
They went down toward the Seine, in despair,
shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of
these ancient noctambulant coupes which, exactly as
they were ashamed to show their misery during that day,
are never seen round Paris except at nightfall.
It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and
once more, sadly, they climbed up homeward. All was
ended for her. And as to him, he reflected that he must be at
the Ministry at ten o'clock
She removed the wraps, which covered her shoulders, before
the glass, so as once again to see herself in all her glory.
But kuddenly she uttered a cry. She had no longer the
necklace around her neck
Her husband, already half undressed,
demanded: "What is the matter with you?"
"I have I have lost Mme Forestier's
necklace." He stood up, distracted
What? - how? -
impossible?"
 And they looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds
of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere. They did not
find it.
He asked: "You're sure you had it on when
you left the ball?" "Yes, I felt it in the
vestibule of the palace."
"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 one another. At last
Loisel put on his clothes.
"I shall go back on front," said he, "over the whole
route which we have taken to see if I can find it."
And he went out. She sat waiting on a chair in her ball
dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, without
fire, without a thought
Her husband came back 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
suspicion 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 dasp of your necklace and that you are having it
mended. That will give us time to turn around."
She wrote at his dictation At the end of the
week they had lost all hopes. And Loisel, who
had aged Ave years, declared: "We must
consider how to replace that ornament."
The next day they took the box which had contained it,
and ther 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 jeweler to jeweler, searching for
a necklace like the other, consulting their
memories, sick both of them with chagrin and
anguish.
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string
of diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the
one they looked for. It was worth 40,000 francs. They
could have it for 36.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days
yet. And

case they found the other one before the end

of February.
 Loisel possessed 18,000 francs which his father
had left him. He would borrow the rest.
He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, 500
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 his signature without even knowing if he could
meet it; and frightened by the pains yet to come by the black
misery which was about to fall upon him, by the prospect
of all the physical privations and of all the mortal
tortures which he was to suffer, he went to get the
necklace, putting down upon the merchant's
counter 36,000 francs.
When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme.
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. I

what would she have said? Would she not have taken
Mme Loisel for a thief?
Mme. Loisel now knew the terrible existence of the
needy. She took part, moreover, all of a sudden, with
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 rosy nails on the pots and pans.
She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the
dishcloths,

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, her basket on her arm, bargaining,
insulting, defending her miserable money sou by

Each month they have to meet some notes, renew

others, obtain more time.
Her husband worked in the evening making a fair
copy of some tradesman's accounts, and late at night
he often copied manuscripts for five sous a page. And
this life lasted for 10 years.
At the end of 10 years, they had paid everything,
with the rates of usury, and the accumulations of the
compound interest.
Mme. 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 happy evening of long ago, of the ball
where she had been so beautiful and so feted.
What would have happened if she had not lost
that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How life is
strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for
us to be lost or be saved!
But, one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the
Champs Elysees to refresh herself from the labor of the
week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a
child. It was Mme. Forestier, sol young, still beautiful,
still charming.
Mme Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to
her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she
was going to tell her about it. Why not?
She went up
"Good-day,
Jeanne
by the plain
be mistaken."
The other, astonished to be familiarly addressed
by goodwife, did not recognize her at all, and stammered:
"Butmadam! - I do not know you must be mista "No. I
am Mathilde Loisel." Her friend utter a cry.
 "Oh, my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"
"Yes. I have had days hard enough, since I have
seer days wretched enough-and that because of you!"
"Of me! How so?"
"Do you remember that diamond necklace which you
lenta 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 just like it. And for this we
have been 10 years paying. You can understand that it was not
easy for us, us who have nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very
glad."
Mme. Forestier had stopped.
"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to
replace mine?'
"Yes. You never noticed it, then! They were very alike." And
she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive atome Mme.
Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was
paste. worth at most five hundred francs!"
as paste. It was