The Necklace
by Guy de Maupassant
LA PARURE (A short story in French)
She was
one of those pretty and charming girls who are sometimes, as if by a mistake of
destiny, born in 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 from women of the people the equals of the very
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, 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 regrets which were
despairing, and distracted dreams. She thought of the silent ante-chambers hung
with Oriental tapestry, lit by tall bronze candelabra, and of the two great
footmen in knee-breeches who sleep in the big armchairs, made drowsy by the
heavy warmth of the hot-air stove. She thought of the long salons fitted
up with ancient silk, of the delicate furniture carrying priceless curiosities,
and of 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 a table-cloth 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 tapestry which 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 marvelous plates, and of the whispered gallantries which
you listen to with a sphinx-like 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 so have liked 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 and see any more, 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. Georges Ramponneau request the honor of
M. and Mme. Loisel’s company at the palace of the Ministry on Monday evening,
January 18th.”
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 such a fine
opportunity. I had awful 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 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 theater 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 towards the corners of her mouth. He
stuttered:
“What’s
the matter? What’s the matter?”
But, by a
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 go to 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 cost, a 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 a frightened
exclamation from the economical clerk.
Finally,
she replied, hesitatingly:
“I don’t
know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred 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, of a Sunday.
But he
said:
“All right.
I will give you four hundred 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 last 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 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.”
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.”
She saw
first of all some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, 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, to
give them back. She kept asking:
“Haven’t
you any more?”
“Why, yes.
Look. I don’t know what you like.”
All of a
sudden she discovered, in a black satin box, a 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 the sight of herself.
Then she
asked, hesitating, filled with anguish:
“Can you
lend me that, only that?”
“Why, yes,
certainly.”
She sprang
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 success. She was prettier than them
all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and crazy with joy. All the men looked at her,
asked her name, endeavored to be introduced. All the attachés of the Cabinet
wanted to waltz with her. She was remarked by the minister himself.
She danced
with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in the
triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of 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
woman’s heart.
She went
away about four o’clock in the morning. Her husband had been sleeping since
midnight, in a little deserted ante-room, with three other gentlemen whose
wives were 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 cabmen whom they saw passing by at a distance.
They went
down towards the Seine, in despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on
the quay one of those ancient noctambulant coupés which, exactly as if they
were ashamed to show their misery during the day, are never seen round Paris
until after 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
more to see herself in all her glory. But suddenly 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?”
She turned
madly towards him:
“I have—I
have—I’ve 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 foot,” said he, “over the whole route which we have taken, to see if
I can’t 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 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.
And
Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
“We must
consider how to replace that ornament.”
The next
day they took the box which had contained it, and they 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,
consulting their memories, sick both of them with chagrin and with 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 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 found
the other one 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 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 moral tortures
which he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, putting down upon the
merchant’s counter thirty-six thousand 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. If she had detected the
substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said? Would she
not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief?
Mme.
Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part,
moreover, all on 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 greasy pots and pans. She washed
the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dish-cloths, 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, her basket on her
arm, bargaining, insulted, defending her miserable money sou by sou.
Each month
they had 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 manuscript for five sous a page.
And 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.
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 gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had
been so beautiful and so fêted.
What would
have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? who knows? How life
is strange and how changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or
to be saved!
But, one
Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysées to refresh herself
from the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a
child. It was Mme. Forestier, still 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 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 days hard enough, since I have seen you, days wretched enough—and that
because of you!”
“Of me!
How so?”
“Do you
remember that diamond necklace which 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 just like it. And for this we have been ten years paying. You
can understand that it was not easy for us, us who had 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 like.”
And she
smiled with a joy which was proud and naïve at once.
Mme.
Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands.
“Oh, my
poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred
francs!”
17 February 1884.
No comments:
Post a Comment