The Necklace

Part One · The Invitation

Mathilde Loisel was one of those charming and attractive young women who, through some apparent miscalculation of destiny, are born into a family of modest clerks. She possessed no dowry, no expectations, and no conceivable means of becoming acquainted with, understood by, loved and married to a wealthy and distinguished gentleman, and so she had permitted herself to be married to a minor clerk in the Ministry of Public Instruction. She dressed simply, because she could not afford to dress elaborately, but she was as unhappy as if she had fallen from some higher station. She suffered ceaselessly, convinced that she had been created for every delicacy and every luxury, and she was tormented by the shabbiness of her apartment, the worn walls, the faded chairs and the ugly curtains.

All these things, which another woman of her circumstances would scarcely have noticed, tortured and humiliated her. She dreamed of silent antechambers hung with oriental tapestries and illuminated by tall bronze candelabras, of grand drawing rooms upholstered in antique silk, and of elegant boudoirs perfumed for afternoon conversations with the most celebrated and fashionable gentlemen in Paris. When she sat down to dinner at the round table covered with a tablecloth three days old, opposite her husband, who lifted the lid of the soup tureen and declared with delighted satisfaction, "Ah, a good stew! There is nothing I prefer to that," she imagined exquisite dinners, gleaming silverware, and tapestries peopled with ancient figures and exotic birds in the midst of a fairy forest. She owned no jewels whatsoever, and those were the only things she truly loved.

One evening her husband returned home with an air of triumph, holding a large envelope in his hand. "Here," he said, "is something for you." She tore it open eagerly and discovered a printed card announcing that the Minister of Public Instruction and Madame Ramponneau requested the honor of their company at an evening reception at the ministry. Instead of being delighted, as her husband had anticipated, she flung the invitation spitefully onto the table and inquired what he expected her to do with it. He explained, rather wounded, that he had gone to tremendous trouble to obtain it, because everybody wanted one, and very few were distributed to clerks. Then she looked at him with an irritated eye and demanded impatiently what he supposed she could possibly wear to such an occasion.

He had not considered this. He stammered that the dress she wore to the theater looked very pretty to him, and then he stopped, astonished and bewildered, because his wife was weeping. Two enormous tears were rolling slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth. With considerable effort she controlled her distress and replied, in a calm voice, that she had nothing suitable to wear and therefore could not attend, and that he should give the invitation to some colleague whose wife was better equipped than she was. Distressed, her husband asked how much a suitable dress would cost, something simple that she could wear on other occasions as well. She reflected for several seconds, calculating carefully, and finally answered hesitantly that four hundred francs would probably be sufficient.

He grew slightly pale, because he had been saving exactly that amount to purchase a rifle, so that he could join some friends on hunting expeditions the following summer on the plains near Nanterre. Nevertheless, he agreed, and promised her the four hundred francs, urging her to buy a truly beautiful dress. As the day of the ball approached, however, Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy and anxious, although her dress was ready. When her husband questioned her, she confessed that it annoyed her not to possess a single jewel, not one stone, nothing whatsoever to wear with it, and that she would look like poverty itself among the other guests. Her husband suggested real flowers, which were very fashionable that season, but she was not persuaded, insisting that nothing was more humiliating than to look poor among women who were rich.

Part Two · The Ball

Then her husband exclaimed that she was being foolish. Why not visit her old school friend, Madame Forestier, who was wealthy, and ask to borrow some jewelry? Mathilde uttered a cry of joy, and the next day she hurried to her friend's house and explained her predicament. Madame Forestier went immediately to a wardrobe with a mirrored door, took out a large jewel case, opened it and invited her to choose. Mathilde examined bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross of gold and precious stones of admirable workmanship. She tried them on in front of the mirror, hesitating, unable to decide. Suddenly, in a box of black satin, she discovered a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with an immoderate desire. Her hands trembled as she fastened it around her throat.

She asked anxiously whether she might borrow that one, only that one, and Madame Forestier answered that of course she could. Mathilde embraced her friend passionately and fled with her treasure. The day of the reception arrived, and Madame Loisel was an extraordinary success. She was more beautiful than any other woman present, elegant, gracious, smiling and wild with happiness. All the gentlemen stared at her, inquired her name and sought to be introduced, and every attaché of the cabinet wanted to waltz with her, and even the Minister himself noticed her. She danced with intoxication, with passion, thinking of nothing at all, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness composed of all this admiration and all this victory.

She departed at about four o'clock in the morning. Since midnight her husband had been dozing in a deserted little drawing room with three other gentlemen whose wives were also enjoying themselves enormously. He threw over her shoulders the modest wraps he had brought for the journey home, whose poverty contrasted embarrassingly with the elegance of her ball dress, and she hurried away so as not to be noticed by the other women, who were wrapping themselves in costly furs. They walked down to the Seine in despair, shivering, until at last they found an ancient carriage on the embankment. It brought them to their door on the Rue des Martyrs, and they climbed wearily up to their apartment. In front of the mirror she removed her wraps, to admire herself in her glory one final time. Suddenly she uttered a cry. The necklace was no longer around her neck.

Part Three · Ten Years

Her husband, already half undressed, asked what was wrong, and she turned toward him in panic, explaining that she had lost Madame Forestier's necklace. He leaped up, distracted with alarm, and they searched everywhere, in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in the pockets, but they could not find it anywhere. Her husband dressed again and retraced on foot the entire route they had traveled, while she waited, slumped on a chair in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, without fire, without a thought. He returned at about seven o'clock, having found nothing. He visited the police headquarters and the newspapers to offer a reward, and the cab companies, everywhere that a faint suspicion of hope directed him. He returned at evening with a hollow, pale face. He had discovered nothing.

At the end of a week they had abandoned all hope, and Loisel, who had aged five years, declared that they must replace the necklace. They took the box in which it had been kept and visited the jeweler whose name was inside it, but he consulted his records and explained that he had sold only the box. They went from jeweler to jeweler, searching for a necklace identical to the other, consulting their memories, both of them sick with grief and anxiety. In a shop at the Palais Royal they finally discovered a string of diamonds that appeared to them exactly like the one they were seeking. It was priced at forty thousand francs, but the jeweler would accept thirty-six thousand. Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs that his father had left him, and he borrowed the remainder.

He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one person, five hundred from another, five louis here and three louis there. He signed promissory notes, made ruinous agreements and dealt with moneylenders of every description. He compromised the remainder of his existence, risking his signature without even knowing whether he could honor it, and, terrified by the anguish of the future, by the black misery that was about to descend upon him, he went to collect the new necklace, laying thirty-six thousand francs on the jeweler's counter. When Madame Loisel returned the necklace, Madame Forestier remarked rather coldly that she ought to have returned it sooner, since she might have needed it. She did not open the case, as her friend had dreaded she would, and she never suspected the substitution.

Then Madame Loisel discovered the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part heroically. That dreadful debt must be paid, and she would pay it. They dismissed their servant, moved to a garret under the roof, and she learned the heavy work of the household and the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing out her pink nails on greasy pots and the bottoms of pans. She scrubbed the dirty linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, and hung them to dry on a line. Every morning she carried the garbage down to the street and carried up the water, pausing for breath at every landing. Her husband worked in the evenings, copying documents for a merchant, and late at night he often copied manuscripts at five sous a page. This life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had repaid everything, including the extortionate interest and the accumulated interest upon interest. Madame Loisel now looked old. She had become the strong, hard and rough woman of impoverished households, her hair badly combed, her skirts askew, her hands red. One Sunday, walking along the Champs-Elysees to refresh herself after the labors of the week, she suddenly noticed a woman strolling with a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming. Madame Loisel felt moved, and decided to speak to her, since now that the debt was paid she could tell her everything. Madame Forestier did not recognize her at first, and then she exclaimed in astonishment, "Oh, my poor Mathilde, how you have changed!" Mathilde explained that she had endured very hard days since she last saw her, and many miseries, and all because of her.

"Because of me? How so?" asked Madame Forestier. Mathilde reminded her of the diamond necklace she had lent her for the ball at the ministry, and confessed that she had lost it. Her friend protested that she had returned it, and Mathilde explained that she had returned another exactly like it, and that it had taken them ten years to pay for it. "You understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing," she said. "At last it is finished, and I am very glad." Madame Forestier had stopped walking. She asked whether Mathilde meant that she had bought a necklace of diamonds to replace hers, and Mathilde smiled with a proud and simple joy, answering that she had, and that her friend had never noticed, because they were so alike. Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took both of her hands. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was false. It was worth five hundred francs at most!"