A Likely Story: "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant

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.

All these things, which another woman of her caste would not even have noticed, tortured her and made her indignant.

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.

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.

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.

She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

He was disconsolate.

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.

She fastened it round her throat, on her high dress, and remained in ecstasy before herself.

She sprang to her friend’s neck, kissed her with ardor, and then escaped with her treasure.

All the attaches of the Cabinet wanted to dance with her.

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.

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.

“You must write to your friend,” he said, “that you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it repaired.

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.

Forester, the latter said, with an irritated air:—

She learned the rough work of the household, the odious labors of the kitchen.

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.

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.

How singular life is, how changeable!

And she smiled with proud and naïve joy.