Title: The Diamond Necklace
Author: 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 request the honor of M. and
Madame Loisel's company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening,
January 18th.
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!"
-THE END-
Guy De Maupassant's short story: The Diamond Necklace
