The Diamond
Necklace
Guy de Maupassant
Translators: Albert
M.C. McMaster, A.E. Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others.
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!"
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