Click Here to Download the Text
Guy
de Maupassant
She was one of those pretty and charming
girls born, as if by an error of fate, into a family of clerks. She had no
dowry, no expectations, no means of becoming known, understood, loved or wedded
by a man of wealth and distinction; and so she let herself be married to a
minor official at the Ministry of Education.
She dressed plainly because she had
never been able to afford anything better, but she was as unhappy as if she had
once been wealthy. Women don't belong to a caste or class; their beauty, grace,
and natural charm take the place of birth and family. Natural delicacy,
instinctive elegance and a quick wit determine their place in society, and make
the daughters of commoners the equals of the very finest ladies.
She suffered endlessly, feeling she was
entitled to all the delicacies and luxuries of life. She suffered because of
the poorness of her house as she looked at the dirty walls, the worn-out chairs
and the ugly curtains. All these things that another woman of her class would
not even have noticed, tormented her and made her resentful. The sight of the
little Brenton girl who did her housework filled her with terrible regrets and
hopeless fantasies. She dreamed of silent antechambers hung with Oriental tapestries,
lit from above by torches in bronze holders, while two tall footmen in
knee-length breeches napped in huge armchairs, sleepy from the stove's
oppressive warmth. She dreamed of vast living rooms furnished in rare old
silks, elegant furniture loaded with priceless ornaments, and inviting smaller
rooms, perfumed, made for afternoon chats with close friends - famous, sought
after men, who all women envy and desire.
When she sat down to dinner at a round
table covered with a three-day-old cloth opposite her husband who, lifting the
lid off the soup, shouted excitedly, "Ah! Beef stew! What could be
better," she dreamed of fine dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestries
which peopled the walls with figures from another time and strange birds in
fairy forests; she dreamed of delicious dishes served on wonderful plates, of
whispered gallantries listened to with an inscrutable smile as one ate the pink
flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail.
She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing;
and these were the only things she loved. She felt she was made for them alone.
She wanted so much to charm, to be envied, to be desired and sought after.
She had a rich friend, a former
schoolmate at the convent, whom she no longer wanted to visit because she
suffered so much when she came home. For whole days afterwards she would weep
with sorrow, regret, despair and misery.
**
One evening her husband came home with
an air of triumph, holding a large envelope in his hand.
"Look," he said, "here's
something for you."
She tore open the paper and drew out a
card, on which was printed the words:
"The Minister of Education and Mme.
Georges Rampouneau request the pleasure of M. and Mme. Loisel's company at the
Ministry, on the evening of Monday January 18th."
Instead of being delighted, as her
husband had hoped, she threw the invitation on the table resentfully, and
muttered:
"What do you want me to do with
that?"
"But, my dear, I thought you would
be pleased. You never go out, and it will be such a lovely occasion! I had
awful trouble getting it. Every one wants to go; it is very exclusive, and
they're not giving many invitations to clerks. The whole ministry will be
there."
She stared at him angrily, and said,
impatiently:
"And what do you expect me to wear
if I go?"
He hadn't thought of that. He stammered:
"Why, the dress you go to the
theatre in. It seems very nice to me ..."
He stopped, stunned, distressed to see
his wife crying. Two large tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes
towards the corners of her mouth. He stuttered:
"What's the matter? What's the
matter?"
With great effort she overcame her grief
and replied in a calm voice, as she wiped her wet cheeks:
"Nothing. Only I have no dress and
so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to a friend whose wife has
better clothes than I do."
He was distraught, but tried again:
"Let's see, Mathilde. How much
would a suitable dress cost, one which you could use again on other occasions,
something very simple?"
She thought for a moment, computing the
cost, and also wondering what amount she could ask for without an immediate
refusal and an alarmed exclamation from the thrifty clerk.
At last she answered hesitantly:
"I don't know exactly, but I think
I could do it with four hundred francs."
He turned a little pale, because he had
been saving that exact amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a hunting trip
the following summer, in the country near Nanterre, with a few friends who went
lark-shooting there on Sundays.
However, he said:
"Very well, I can give you four
hundred francs. But try and get a really beautiful dress."
**
The day of the party drew near, and
Madame Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Her dress was ready, however. One
evening her husband said to her:
"What's the matter? You've been
acting strange these last three days."
She replied: "I'm upset that I have
no jewels, not a single stone to wear. I will look cheap. I would almost rather
not go to the party."
"You could wear flowers, " he
said, "They are very fashionable at this time of year. For ten francs you
could get two or three magnificent roses."
She was not convinced.
"No; there is nothing more
humiliating than looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women."
"How stupid you are!" her
husband cried. "Go and see your friend Madame Forestier and ask her to
lend you some jewels. You know her well enough for that."
She uttered a cry of joy.
"Of course. I had not thought of
that."
The next day she went to her friend's
house and told her of her distress.
Madame Forestier went to her mirrored
wardrobe, took out a large box, brought it back, opened it, and said to Madame
Loisel:
"Choose, my dear."
First she saw some bracelets, then a
pearl necklace, then a gold Venetian cross set with precious stones, of
exquisite craftsmanship. She tried on the jewelry in the mirror, hesitated,
could not bear to part with them, to give them back. She kept asking:
"You have nothing else?"
"Why, yes. But I don't know what
you like."
Suddenly she discovered, in a black
satin box, a superb diamond necklace, and her heart began to beat with
uncontrolled desire. Her hands trembled as she took it. She fastened it around
her neck, over her high-necked dress, and stood lost in ecstasy as she looked
at herself.
Then she asked anxiously, hesitating:
"Would you lend me this, just
this?"
"Why, yes, of course."
She threw her arms around her friend's
neck, embraced her rapturously, then fled with her treasure.
**
The day of the party arrived. Madame
Loisel was a success. She was prettier than all the other women, elegant,
gracious, smiling, and full of joy. All the men stared at her, asked her name,
tried to be introduced. All the cabinet officials wanted to waltz with her. The
minister noticed her.
She danced wildly, with passion, drunk
on pleasure, forgetting everything in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory
of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness, made up of all this respect,
all this admiration, all these awakened desires, of that sense of triumph that
is so sweet to a woman's heart.
She left at about four o'clock in the
morning. Her husband had been dozing since midnight in a little deserted
anteroom with three other gentlemen whose wives were having a good time.
He threw over her shoulders the clothes
he had brought for her to go outside in, the modest clothes of an ordinary
life, whose poverty contrasted sharply with the elegance of the ball dress. She
felt this and wanted to run away, so she wouldn't be noticed by the other women
who were wrapping themselves in expensive furs.
Loisel held her back.
"Wait a moment, you'll catch a cold
outside. I'll go and find a cab."
But she would not listen to him, and ran
down the stairs. When they were finally in the street, they could not find a
cab, and began to look for one, shouting at the cabmen they saw passing in the
distance.
They walked down toward the Seine in
despair, shivering with cold. At last they found on the quay one of those old
night cabs that one sees in Paris only after dark, as if they were ashamed to
show their shabbiness during the day.
They were dropped off at their door in
the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly walked up the steps to their apartment. It was
all over, for her. And he was remembering that he had to be back at his office
at ten o'clock.
In front of the mirror, she took off the
clothes around her shoulders, taking a final look at herself in all her glory.
But suddenly she uttered a cry. She no longer had the necklace round her neck!
"What is the matter?" asked
her husband, already half undressed.
She turned towards him, panic-stricken.
"I have ... I have ... I no longer
have Madame Forestier's necklace."
He stood up, distraught.
"What! ... how! ... That's
impossible!"
They looked in the folds of her dress,
in the folds of her cloak, in her pockets, everywhere. But they could not find
it.
"Are you sure you still had it on
when you left the ball?" he asked.
"Yes. I touched it in the hall at
the Ministry."
"But if you had lost it in the
street we would have heard it fall. It must be in the cab."
"Yes. That's probably it. Did you
take his number?"
"No. And you, didn't you notice
it?"
"No."
They stared at each other, stunned. At
last Loisel put his clothes on again.
"I'm going back," he said,
"over the whole route we walked, see if I can find it."
He left. She remained in her ball dress
all evening, without the strength to go to bed, sitting on a chair, with no
fire, her mind blank.
Her husband returned at about seven
o'clock. He had found nothing.
He went to the police, to the newspapers
to offer a reward, to the cab companies, everywhere the tiniest glimmer of hope
led him.
She waited all day, in the same state of
blank despair from before this frightful disaster.
Loisel returned in the evening, a
hollow, pale figure; he had found nothing.
"You must write to your
friend," he said, "tell her you have broken the clasp of her necklace
and that you are having it mended. It will give us time to look some
more."
She wrote as he dictated.
**
At the end of one week they had lost all
hope.
And Loisel, who had aged five years,
declared:
"We must consider how to replace
the jewel."
The next day they took the box which had
held it, and went to the jeweler whose name they found inside. He consulted his
books.
"It was not I, madame, who sold the
necklace; I must simply have supplied the case."
And so they went from jeweler to
jeweler, looking for an necklace like the other one, consulting their memories,
both sick with grief and anguish.
In a shop at the Palais Royal, they
found a string of diamonds which seemed to be exactly what they were looking
for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six
thousand.
So they begged the jeweler not to sell
it for three days. And they made an arrangement that he would take it back for
thirty-four thousand francs if the other necklace was found before the end of
February.
Loisel had eighteen thousand francs
which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.
And he did borrow, asking for a thousand
francs from one man, five hundred from another, five louis here, three louis
there. He gave notes, made ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers, with every
type of money-lender. He compromised the rest of his life, risked signing notes
without knowing if he could ever honor them, and, terrified by the anguish
still to come, by the black misery about to fall on him, by the prospect of
every physical privation and every moral torture he was about to suffer, he
went to get the new necklace, and laid down on the jeweler's counter thirty-six
thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took the necklace
back, Madame Forestier said coldly:
"You should have returned it
sooner, I might have needed it."
To the relief of her friend, she did not
open the case. If she had detected the substitution, what would she have
thought? What would she have said? Would she have taken her friend for a thief?
**
From then on, Madame Loisel knew the
horrible life of the very poor. But she played her part heroically. The
dreadful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed their maid; they
changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.
She came to know the drudgery of
housework, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, staining
her rosy nails on greasy pots and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty
linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she
carried the garbage down to the street every morning, and carried up the water,
stopping at each landing to catch her breath. And, dressed like a commoner, she
went to the fruiterer's, the grocer's, the butcher's, her basket on her arm,
bargaining, insulted, fighting over every miserable sou.
Each month they had to pay some notes,
renew others, get more time.
Her husband worked every evening, doing
accounts for a tradesman, and often, late into the night, he sat copying a
manuscript at five sous a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years they had paid
off everything, everything, at usurer's rates and with the accumulations of
compound interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had
become strong, hard and rough like all women of impoverished households. With
hair half combed, with skirts awry, and reddened hands, she talked loudly as
she washed the floor with great swishes of water. But sometimes, when her
husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and thought of that
evening at the ball so long ago, when 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 life is, how fickle! How
little is needed for one to be ruined or saved!
**
One Sunday, as she was walking in the
Champs Élysées to refresh herself after the week's work, suddenly she saw a
woman walking with a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still
beautiful, still charming.
Madame Loisel felt emotional. Should she
speak to her? Yes, of course. And now that she had paid, she would tell her
all. Why not?
She went up to her.
"Good morning, Jeanne."
The other, astonished to be addressed so
familiarly by this common woman, did not recognize her. She stammered:
"But - madame - I don't know. You
must have made a mistake."
"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh! ... my poor Mathilde, how
you've changed! ..."
"Yes, I have had some hard times
since I last saw you, and many miseries ... and all because of you! ..."
"Me? How can that be?"
"You remember that diamond necklace
that you lent me to wear to the Ministry party?"
"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. It wasn't easy for us, we
had very little. But at last it is over, and I am very glad."
Madame Forestier was stunned.
"You say that you bought a diamond
necklace to replace mine?"
"Yes; you didn't notice then? They
were very similar."
And she smiled with proud and innocent
pleasure.
Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took
both her hands.
"Oh, my poor Mathilde! Mine was an
imitation! It was worth five hundred francs at most! ..."
~x~
No comments:
Post a Comment