The Necklace
Loss and ten years of debt
Explain how the lost necklace changed the Loisels' lives.
The necklace is gone. At home, in front of the mirror, she screams: the necklace is gone. They search the folds of her dress and cloak, and every pocket. Loisel walks the whole route back, goes to the police, the cab offices, and puts a notice in the newspapers. Nothing.
A lie to buy time. He makes her write to Mme Forestier that the clasp is being mended. After a week they give up. Loisel, 'older by five years', says: 'We must replace this jewel.'
Thirty-six thousand francs. At a shop in the Palais-Royal they find a necklace that looks exactly the same: valued at forty thousand francs, theirs for thirty-six thousand. Loisel has eighteen thousand francs from his father. He borrows the rest at terrible rates, signing promises he may not be able to keep. Mme Forestier takes it back coldly and doesn't even open the case.
Ten years of hardship.
- They dismiss the maid and move to rooms in an attic.
- Matilda does all the hard housework: washing dishes and clothes, carrying water, bargaining at the market over every sou.
- Loisel works in the evenings, keeping a merchant's accounts, and copies papers at five sous a page at night.
After ten years they have paid it all.
'Mine were false.' Matilda now looks old: 'a strong, hard woman, the crude woman of the poor household'. Sometimes she still sits by the window and thinks of that ball: 'How would it have been if she had not lost the necklace?' One Sunday she meets Mme Forestier, still young and beautiful, and proudly tells her everything. Mme Forestier is touched: 'Oh! My poor Matilda! Mine were false. They were not worth over five hundred francs!'
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