Page 100 - Universal

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.”

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