莫泊桑项链英文版

The NecklaceShe was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans. She had no marriage portion, no expectations, no means of getting known, understood, loved, and wedded by a man of wealth and distinction; and she let herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. Her tastes were simple because she had never been able to afford any other, but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste or class, their beauty, grace, and charm serving them for birth or family, their natural delicacy, their instinctive elegance, their nimbleness of wit, are their only mark of rank, and put the slum girl on a level with the highest lady in the land.She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house, from its mean walls, worn chairs, and ugly curtains. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her. The sight of the little Breton girl who came to do the work in her little house aroused heart-broken regrets and hopeless dreams in her mind. She imagined silent antechambers, heavy with Oriental tapestries, lit by torches in lofty bronze sockets, with two tall footmen in knee-breeches sleeping in large arm-chairs, overcome by the heavy warmth of the stove. She imagined vast saloons hung with antique silks, exquisite pieces of furniture supporting priceless ornaments, and small, charming, perfumed rooms, created just for little parties of intimate friends, men who were famous and sought after, whose homage roused every other woman's envious longings.When she sat down for dinner at the round table covered with a three-days-old cloth, opposite her husband, who took the cover off the soup-tureen, exclaiming delightedly: "Aha! Scotch broth! What could be better?" she imagined delicate meals, gleaming silver, tapestries peopling the walls with folk of a past age and strange birds in faery forests; she imagined delicate food served in marvellous dishes, murmured gallantries, listened to with an inscrutable smile as one trifled with the rosy flesh of trout or wings of asparagus chicken.She had no clothes, no jewels, nothing. And these were the only things she loved; she felt that she was made for them. She had longed so eagerly to charm, to be desired, to be wildly attractive and sought after.< 2 >She had a rich friend, an old school friend whom she refused to visit, because she suffered so keenly when she returned home. She would weep whole days, with grief, regret, despair, and misery.*One evening her husband came home with an exultant air, holding a large envelope in his hand."Here's something for you," he said.Swiftly she tore the paper and drew out a printed card on which were these words:"The Minister of Education and Madame Ramponneau request the pleasure of the company of Monsieur and Madame Loisel at the Ministry on the evening of Monday, January the 18th."Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she flung the invitation petulantly across the table, murmuring:"What do you want me to do with this?""Why, darling, I thought you'd be pleased. You never go out, and this is a great occasion. I had tremendous trouble to get it. Every one wants one; it's very select, and very few go to the clerks. You'll see all the really big people there."She looked at him out of furious eyes, and said impatiently: "And what do you suppose I am to wear at such an affair?"He had not thought about it; he stammered:"Why, the dress you go to the theatre in. It looks very nice, to me . . ."He stopped, stupefied and utterly at a loss when he saw that his wife was beginning to cry. Two large tears ran slowly down from the corners of her eyes towards the corners of her mouth."What's the matter with you? What's the matter with you?" he faltered.But with a violent effort she overcame her grief and replied in a calm voice, wiping her wet cheeks:"Nothing. Only I haven't a dress and so I can't go to this party. Give your invitation to some friend of yours whose wife will be turned out better than I shall."He was heart-broken."Look here, Mathilde," he persisted. "What would be the cost of a suitable dress, which you could use on other occasions as well, something very simple?"She thought for several seconds, reckoning up prices and also wondering for how large a sum she could ask without bringing upon herself an immediate refusal and an exclamation of horror from the careful-minded clerk.< 3 >At last she replied with some hesitation:"I don't know exactly, but I think I could do it on four hundred francs."He grew slightly pale, for this was exactly the amount he had been saving for a gun, intending to get a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre with some friends who went lark-shooting there on Sundays.Nevertheless he said: "Very well. I'll give you four hundred francs. But try and get a really nice dress with the money."The day of the party drew near, and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy and anxious. Her dress was ready, however. One evening her husband said to her:"What's the matter with you? You've been very odd for the last three days.""I'm utterly miserable at not having any jewels, not a single stone, to wear," she replied. "I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not go to the party.""Wear flowers," he said. "They're very smart at this time of the year. For ten francs you could get two or three gorgeous roses."She was not convinced."No . . . there's nothing so humiliating as looking poor in the middle of a lot of rich women.""How stupid you are!" exclaimed her husband. "Go and see Madame Forestier and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her quite well enough for that."She uttered a cry of delight."That's true. I never thought of it."Next day she went to see her friend and told her her trouble.Madame Forestier went to her dressing-table, took up a large box, brought it to Madame Loisel, opened it, and said:"Choose, my dear."First she saw some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian cross in gold and gems, of exquisite workmanship. She tried the effect of the jewels before the mirror, hesitating, unable to make up her mind to leave them, to give them up. She kept on asking:"Haven't you anything else?""Yes. Look for yourself. I don't know what you would like best."Suddenly she discovered, in a black satin case, a superb diamond necklace; her heart began to beat covetously. Her hands trembled as she lifted it. She fastened it round her neck, upon her high dress, and remained in ecstasy at sight of herself.< 4 >Then, with hesitation, she asked in anguish:"Could you lend me this, just this alone?""Yes, of course."She flung herself on her friend's breast, embraced her frenziedly, and went away with her treasure. The day of the party arrived. Madame Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest woman present, elegant, graceful, smiling, and quite above herself with happiness. All the men stared at her, inquired her name, and asked to be introduced to her. All the Under-Secretaries of State were eager to waltz with her. The Minister noticed her.She danced madly, ecstatically, drunk with pleasure, with no thought for anything, in the triumph of her beauty, in the pride of her success, in a cloud of happiness made up of this universal homage and admiration, of the desires she had aroused, of the completeness of a victory so dear to her feminine heart.She left about four o'clock in the morning. Since midnight her husband had been dozing in a deserted little room, in company with three other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the garments he had brought for them to go home in, modest everyday clothes, whose poverty clashed with the beauty of the ball-dress. She was conscious of this and was anxious to hurry away, so that she should not be noticed by the other women putting on their costly furs.Loisel restrained her."Wait a little. You'll catch cold in the open. I'm going to fetch a cab."But she did not listen to him and rapidly descended the staircase. When they were out in the street they could not find a cab; they began to look for one, shouting at the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance.They walked down towards the Seine, desperate and shivering. At last they found on the quay one of those old nightprowling carriages which are only to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they were ashamed of their shabbiness in the daylight.It brought them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and sadly they walked up to their own apartment. It was the end, for her. As for him, he was thinking that he must be at the office at ten.She took off the garments in which she had wrapped her shoulders, so as to see herself in all her glory before the mirror. But suddenly she uttered a cry. The necklace was no longer round her neck!< 5 >"What's the matter with you?" asked her husband, already half undressed.She turned towards him in the utmost distress."I . . . I . . . I've no longer got Madame Forestier's necklace. . . ."He started with astonishment."What! . . . Impossible!"They searched in the folds of her dress, in the folds of the coat, in the pockets, everywhere. They could not find it."Are you sure that you still had it on when you came away from the ball?" he asked."Yes, I touched it in the hall at the Ministry.""But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall.""Yes. Probably we should. Did you take the number of the cab?""No. You didn't notice it, did you?""No."They stared at one another, dumbfounded. At last Loisel put on his clothes again."I'll go over all the ground we walked," he said, "and see if I can't find it."And he went out. She remained in her evening clothes, lacking strength to get into bed, huddled on a chair, without volition or power of thought.Her husband returned about seven. He had found nothing.He went to the police station, to the newspapers, to offer a reward, to the cab companies, everywhere that a ray of hope impelled him.She waited all day long, in the same state of bewilderment at this fearful catastrophe.Loisel came home at night, his face lined and pale; he had discovered nothing."You must write to your friend," he said, "and tell her that you've broken the clasp of her necklace and are getting it mended. That will give us time to look about us."She wrote at his dictation.*By the end of a week they had lost all hope.Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:"We must see about replacing the diamonds."Next day they took the box which had held the necklace and went to the jewellers whose name was inside. He consulted his books."It was not I who sold this necklace, Madame; I must have merely supplied the clasp."Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, searching for another necklace like the first, consulting their memories, both ill with remorse and anguish of mind.In a shop at the Palais-Royal they found a string of diamonds which seemed to them exactly like the one they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs. They were allowed to have it for thirty-six thousand.< 6 >They begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they arranged matters on the understanding that it would be taken back for thirty-four thousand francs, if the first one were found before the end of February.Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs left to him by his father. He intended to borrow the rest.He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, five hundred from another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes of hand, entered into ruinous agreements, did business with usurers and the whole tribe of money-lenders. He mortgaged the whole remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he could honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about to fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he went to get the new necklace and put down upon the jeweller's counter thirty-six thousand francs.When Madame Loisel took back the necklace to Madame Forestier, the latter said to her in a chilly voice:"You ought to have brought it back sooner; I might have needed it."She did not, as her friend had feared, open the case. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she not have taken her for a thief?*Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The servant was dismissed. They changed their flat; they took a garret under the roof.She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.Every month notes had to be paid off, others renewed, time gained.< 7 >Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant's accounts, and often at night he did copying at twopence-halfpenny a page.And this life lasted ten years.At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything, the usurer's charges and the accumulation of superimposed interest.Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard, coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels. Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save!One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Elysees to freshen herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive.Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?She went up to her."Good morning, Jeanne."The other did not recognise her, and was surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a poor woman."But . . . Madame . . ." she stammered. "I don't know . . . you must be making a mistake.""No . . . I am Mathilde Loisel."Her friend uttered a cry."Oh! . . . my poor Mathilde, how you have changed! . . .""Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last; and many sorrows . . . and all on your account.""On my account! . . . How was that?""You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the Ministry?""Yes. Well?""Well, I lost it.""How could you? Why, you brought it back.""I brought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we have been paying for it. You realise it wasn't easy for us; we had no money. . . . Well, it's paid for at last, and I'm glad indeed."< 8 >Madame Forestier had halted."You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?""Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very much alike."And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness.Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands."Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . "

This is a one-act play, which is based on Maupassant’s best-known story The Diamond Necklace. There are three characters in the play: Mathilde Loisel, a young woman;Pierre Loisel, Mathilde’s husband, a government worker; Jeanne, Mathilde's good friend.中文介绍：女主人公是一个小公务员的妻子。一次，接受了部长举办的晚会的邀请。罗瓦赛尔太太由于虚荣心作祟，向一个贵妇人借了一条项链。后来这条项链不慎在舞会上丢失，罗瓦赛尔太太为了赔给朋友一模一样的项链，落入高利贷的陷阱，就此开始了艰辛的生活，葬送了十年的青春。最后，当她在还清欠款后，偶遇那位贵妇人时，妇人却告诉她那条项链其实是假的。英文介绍：The story takes place in Paris. One day, Pierre gets an invitation to a palace ball. He thinks it important to him, and decides to go to the party with his wife Mathilde. But Mathilde is worried, because she has no new dress and no jewellwey to wear. Her husband spends 400 francs on a new dress and she herself borrows a diamond necklace from her good friend Jeanne. The young couple go to the ball and has a very good time here. On their way back after the ball, Mathilde finds that the necklace is no longer around her neck. They rush back to the palace and look for it. But they can’t find it; it is lost.The young couple borrow a great deal of money and buy a necklace that is exactly like Jeanne’s. It costs them 36000 francs. So they have to work day and night to pay back the money they have borrowed. After ten years of hard work, they at last pay back all the money, but now Mathilde looks so old that Jeanne even can’t recognize her when they meet.When Jeanne hears the story, she tells Mathilde that the necklace she has borrowed isn’t a real diamond necklace. It isn’t valuable at all. It is worth 500 francs at the most.

SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education. She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames. 2 She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five o’clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired. When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, “Ah, the good pot-au-feu. I don’t know anything better than that,” she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail. She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after. She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days, whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much did she suffer as she came away. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress. But one evening her husband came in with a proud air, holding in his hand a large envelope. “There,” said he, “there’s something for you.” She quickly tore the paper and took out of it a printed card which bore these words: “The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to do them the honor to pass the evening with them at the palace of the Ministry, on Monday, January .” Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with annoyance, murmuring “What do you want me to do with that?” “But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here’s a chance, a fine one. I had the hardest work to get it. Everybody is after them; they are greatly sought for and not many are given to the clerks. You will see there all the official world.” She looked at him with an irritated eye and she declared with impatience: “What do you want me to put on my back to go there?” He had not thought of that; he hesitated: “But the dress in which you go to the theater. That looks very well to me” He shut up, astonished and distracted at seeing that his wife was weeping. Two big tears were descending slowly from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. He stuttered: What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” But by a violent effort she had conquered her trouble, and she replied in a calm voice as she wiped her damp cheeks: “Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.” He was disconsolate. He began again: “See here, Mathilde, how much would this cost, a proper dress, which would do on other occasions; something very simple?” She reflected a few seconds, going over her calculations, and thinking also of the sum which she might ask without meeting an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the frugal clerk. “At last, she answered hesitatingly: “I don’t know exactly, but it seems to me that with four hundred francs I might do it.” He grew a little pale, for he was reserving just that sum to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting, the next summer, on the plain of Nanterre, with some friends who used to shoot larks there on Sundays. But he said: “All right. I will give you four hundred francs. But take care to have a pretty dress.” The day of the party drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Yet her dress was ready. One evening her husband said to her: “What’s the matter? Come, now, you have been quite queer these last three days.” And she answered: “It annoys me not to have a jewel, not a single stone, to put on. I shall look like distress. I would almost rather not go to this party.” He answered: “You will wear some natural flowers. They are very stylish this time of the year. For ten francs you will have two or three magnificent roses.” But she was not convinced. “No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women.” But her husband cried: “What a goose you are! Go find your friend, Mme. Forester, and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You know her well enough to do that.” She gave a cry of joy “That’s true. I had not thought of it.” The next day she went to her friend’s and told her about her distress. Me. Forester went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large casket, brought it, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel: “Choose, my dear.” She saw at first bracelets, then a necklace of pearls, then a Venetian cross of gold set with precious stones of an admirable workmanship. She tried on the ornaments before the glass, hesitated, and could not decide to take them off and to give them up. She kept on asking: “You haven’t anything else?” “Yes, yes. Look. I do not know what will happen to please you.” All at once she discovered, in a box of black satin, a superb necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with boundless desire. Her hands trembled in taking it up. She fastened it round her throat, on her high dress, and remained in ecstasy before herself. Then, she asked, hesitating, full of anxiety: “Can you lend me this, only this?” “Yes, yes, certainly.” She sprang to her friend’s neck, kissed her with ardor, and then escaped with her treasure. The day of the party arrived. Mme. Loisel was a success. She was the prettiest of them all, elegant, gracious, smiling, and mad with joy. All the men were looking at her, inquiring her name, asking to be introduced. All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her. The Minister took notice of her. She danced with delight, with passion, intoxicated with pleasure, thinking of nothing, in the triumph of her beauty, in the glory of her success, in a sort of cloud of happiness made up of all these tributes, of all the admirations, of all these awakened desires, of this victory so complete and so sweet to a woman’s heart. She went away about four in the morning. Since midnight—her husband has been dozing in a little anteroom with three other men whose wives were having a good time. He threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought to go home in, modest garments of every-day life, the poverty of which was out of keeping with the elegance of the ball dress. She felt this, and wanted to fly so as not to be noticed by the other women, who were wrapping themselves up in rich furs. Loisel kept her back “Wait a minute; you will catch cold outside; I’ll call a cab.” But she did not listen to him, and went downstairs rapidly. When they were in the street, they could not find a carriage, and they set out in search of one, hailing the drivers whom they saw passing in the distance. They went down toward the Seine, disgusted, shivering. Finally, they found on the Quai one of those old night-hawk cabs which one sees in Paris only after night has fallen, as though they are ashamed of their misery in the daytime. It brought them to their door, rue des Martyrs; and they went up their own stairs sadly. For her it was finished. And he was thinking that he would have to be at the Ministry at ten o’clock. She took off the wraps with which she had covered her shoulders, before the mirror, so as to see herself once more in her glory. But suddenly she gave a cry. She no longer had the necklace around her throat! Her husband, half undressed already, asked “What is the matter with you?” She turned to him, terror-stricken “I—I—I have not Mme. Forester’s diamond necklace!” He jumped up, frightened “What? How? It is not possible!” And they searched in the folds of the dress, in the folds of the wrap, in the pockets, everywhere. They did not find it. He asked: “Are you sure you still had it when you left the ball?” 71 “Yes, I touched it in the vestibule of the Ministry.” 72 “But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall. It must be in the cab.” 73 “Yes. That is probable. Did you take the number?” “No. And you—you did not even look at it?” “No.” They gazed at each other, crushed. At last Loisel dressed himself again. “I’m going,” he said, “back the whole distance we came on foot, to see if I cannot find it.” And he went out. She stayed there, in her ball dress, without strength to go to bed, overwhelmed, on a chair, without a fire, without a thought. Her husband came back about seven o’clock. He had found nothing. Then he went to police headquarters, to the newspapers to offer a reward, to the cab company; he did everything, in fact, that a trace of hope could urge him to. She waited all day, in the same dazed state in face of this horrible disaster. Loisel came back in the evening, with his face worn and white; he had discovered nothing. “You must write to your friend,” he said, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it repaired. That will give us time to turn around.” She wrote as he dictated. At the end of a week they had lost all hope. And Loisel, aged by five years, declared: “We must see how we can replace those jewels.” The next day they took the case which had held them to the jeweler whose name was in the cover. He consulted his books. “It was not I, madam, who sold this necklace. I only supplied the case.” Then they went from jeweler to jeweler, looking for a necklace like the other, consulting their memory,—sick both of them with grief and anxiety. In a shop in the Palais Royal, they found a diamond necklace that seemed to them absolutely like the one they were seeking. It was priced forty thousand francs. They could have it for thirty-six. They begged the jeweler not to sell it for three days. And they made a bargain that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand, if the first was found before the end of February. Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He had to borrow the remainder. He borrowed, asking a thousand francs from one, five hundred from another, five here, three louis there. He gave promissory notes, made ruinous agreements, dealt with usurers, with all kinds of lenders. He compromised the end of his life, risked his signature without even knowing whether it could be honored; and, frightened by all the anguish of the future, by the black misery which was about to settle down on him, by the perspective of all sorts of physical deprivations and of all sorts of moral tortures, he went to buy the new diamond necklace, laying down on the jeweler’s counter thirty-six thousand francs. When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace to Mme. Forester, the latter said, with an irritated air:— “You ought to have brought it back sooner, for I might have needed it.” She did not open the case, which her friend had been fearing. If she had noticed the substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Might she not have been taken for a thief? Mme. Loisel learned the horrible life of the needy. She made the best of it, moreover, frankly, heroically. The frightful debt must be paid. She would pay it. They dismissed the servant; they changed their rooms; they took an attic under the roof. She learned the rough work of the household, the odious labors of the kitchen. She washed the dishes, wearing out her pink nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the towels, which she dried on a rope; she carried down the garbage to the street every morning, and she carried up the water, pausing for breath on every floor. And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, a basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, fighting for her wretched money, sou by sou. Every month they had to pay notes, to renew others to gain time. The husband worked in the evening keeping up the books of a shopkeeper, and at night often he did copying at five sous the page. And this life lasted ten years. At the end of ten years they had paid everything back, everything, with the rates of usury and all the accumulation of heaped-up interest. Mme. Loisel seemed aged now. She had become the robust woman, hard and rough, of a poor household. Badly combed, with her skirts awry and her hands red, her voice was loud, and she washed the floor with splashing water. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and she thought of that evening 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 singular life is, how changeable! What a little thing it takes to save you or to lose you. Then, one Sunday, as she was taking a turn in the Champs Elysées, as a recreation after the labors of the week, she perceived suddenly a woman walking with a child. It was Mme. Forester, still young, still beautiful, still seductive. 107 Mme. Loisel felt moved. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid up, she would tell her all. Why not? She drew near. “Good morning, Jeanne.” The other did not recognize her, astonished to be hailed thus familiarly by this woman of the people. She hesitated “But madam I don’t know—are you not making a mistake?” “No. I am Mathilde Loisel.” Her friend gave a cry “Oh!—My poor Mathilde, how you are changed.” “Yes, I have had hard days since I saw you, and many troubles,—and that because of you.” “Of me?—How so?” “You remember that diamond necklace that you lent me to go to the ball at the Ministry?” “Yes. And then?” “Well, I lost it.” “How can that be?—since you brought it back to me?” “I brought you back another just like it. And now for ten years we have been paying for it. You will understand that it was not easy for us, who had nothing. At last, it is done, and I am mighty glad.” Mme. Forester had guessed. “You say that you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?” “Yes. You did not notice it, even, did you? They were exactly alike?” And she smiled with proud and na?ve joy. Mme. Forester, much moved, took her by both hands: “Oh, my poor Mathilde. But mine were false. At most they were worth five hundred francs!”

SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let them make a match for her with a little clerk in the Department of Education. She was simple since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though kept out of her own class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames. 2 She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of her dwelling, from the worn walls, the abraded chairs, the ugliness of the stuffs. All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant. The sight of the little girl from Brittany who did her humble housework awoke in her desolated regrets and distracted dreams. She let her mind dwell on the quiet vestibules, hung with Oriental tapestries, lighted by tall lamps of bronze, and on the two tall footmen in knee breeches who dozed in the large armchairs, made drowsy by the heat of the furnace. She let her mind dwell on the large parlors, decked with old silk, with their delicate furniture, supporting precious bric-a-brac, and on the coquettish little rooms, perfumed, prepared for the five o’clock chat with the most intimate friends, men well known and sought after, whose attentions all women envied and desired. When she sat down to dine, before a tablecloth three days old, in front of her husband, who lifted the cover of the tureen, declaring with an air of satisfaction, “Ah, the good pot-au-feu. I don’t know anything better than that,” she was thinking of delicate repasts, with glittering silver, with tapestries peopling the walls with ancient figures and with strange birds in a fairy-like forest; she was thinking of exquisite dishes, served in marvelous platters, of compliment whispered and heard with a sphinx-like smile, while she was eating the rosy flesh of a trout or the wings of a quail. She had no dresses, no jewelry, nothing. And she loved nothing else; she felt herself made for that only. She would so much have liked to please, to be envied, to be seductive and sought after. She had a rich friend, a comrade of her convent days, whom she did not want to go and see any more, so much did she suffer as she came away. And she wept all day long, from chagrin, from regret, from despair, and from distress. But one evening her husband came in with a proud air, holding in his hand a large envelope. “There,” said he, “there’s something for you.” She quickly tore the paper and took out of it a printed card which bore these words: “The Minister of Education and Mme. Georges Rampouneau beg M. and Mme. Loisel to do them the honor to pass the evening with them at the palace of the Ministry, on Monday, January .” Instead of being delighted, as her husband hoped, she threw the invitation on the table with annoyance, murmuring “What do you want me to do with that?” “But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go out, and here’s a chance, a fine one. I had the hardest work to get it. Everybody is after them; they are greatly sought for and not many are given to the clerks. You will see there all the official world.” She looked at him with an irritated eye and she declared with impatience: “What do you want me to put on my back to go there?” He had not thought of that; he hesitated: “But the dress in which you go to the theater. That looks very well to me” He shut up, astonished and distracted at seeing that his wife was weeping. Two big tears were descending slowly from the corners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth. He stuttered: What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” But by a violent effort she had conquered her trouble, and she replied in a calm voice as she wiped her damp cheeks: “Nothing. Only I have no clothes, and in consequence I cannot go to this party. Give your card to some colleague whose wife has a better outfit than I.” He was disconsolate. He began again: “See here, Mathilde, how much would this cost, a proper dress, which would do on other occasions; something very simple?” She reflected a few seconds, going over her calculations, and thinking also of the sum which she might ask without meeting an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the frugal clerk. “At last, she answered hesitatingly: “I don’t know exactly, but it seems to me that with four hundred francs I might do it.” He grew a little pale, for he was reserving just that sum to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting, the next summer, on the plain of Nanterre, with some friends who used to shoot larks there on Sundays. But he said: “All right. I will give you four hundred francs. But take care to have a pretty dress.” The day of the party drew near, and Mme. Loisel seemed sad, restless, anxious. Yet her dress was ready. One evening her husband said to her: “What’s the matter? Come, now, you have been quite queer these last three days.” And she answered: “It annoys me not to have a jewel, not a single stone, to put on. I shall look like distress. I would almost rather not go to this party.” He answered: “You will wear some natural flowers. They are very stylish this time of the year. For ten francs you will have two or three magnificent roses.” But she was not convinced. “No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among a lot of rich women.” But her husband cried: “What a goose you are! Go find your friend, Mme. Forester, and ask her to lend you some jewelry. You know her well enough to do that.” She gave a cry of joy “That’s true. I had not thought of it.” The next day she went to her friend’s and told her about her distress. Me. Forester went to her mirrored wardrobe, took out a large casket, brought it, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel: