She 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.
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. Everyone 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.
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."
"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 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.
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 night
prowling carriages which is 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!
"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.
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.
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, and 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."
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! . . . "
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar