She took on heavy housework and all the menial tasks necessary. Her rosy pink nails grated against rough saucepan bottoms and coarse crockery. She scrubbed dirty linen, shirts and kitchen cloths which she hung out herself on the line to dry; every morning she took filthy garbage out into the street for collection and carried every drop of water up by hand; dressed in humble worker clothes, she haggled with the fruiterer, the butcher and the grocer. With her basket over her arm she traded insults as she marketed, watching with care every miserable sou in her purse.

Every month there were bills to be paid, and promissory notes to renew so as to gain a little time.

Her husband worked in the evenings now, on the accounts of a businessman of his acquaintance, and at night worked on copying at five sous a page.

This régime continued for ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything they owed; everything, including exorbitant interest and the accumulated debts involved.

Madame Loisel now looked old. She had coarsened and become the tough, hard woman which poverty often breeds. With dishevelled hair, her skirts in a twist and reddened, work-worn hands, she yelled with the best of them as she swilled the flagstone floors far below. From time to time, however, when her husband was away at work, she would sit near the window and remember fondly that now long-distant night when she had been so beautiful and so thoroughly fêted.

What might have ensued, she wondered, if she had not lost the necklace? Who could tell? What indeed? How strange life is, how unpredictable! What a little thing it takes to ruin or raise you to heaven!

One Sunday, when she had gone for a stroll along the Champs Élysées as a break from the tedium of the weekly routine, she suddenly noticed a woman walking and holding a child by the hand. It was Madame Forestier, as youthful-looking, beautiful and attractive as ever.

Madame Loisel felt a pang. Should she go and speak to her old friend? Well, of course she should! Why not? Now that everything was paid off, she could tell her the whole story.

She approached: ‘Hello there, Jeanne.’

The other woman failed to recognize her and was somewhat taken aback at being addressed so familiarly by this matronly stranger. She stammered: ‘I’m sorry, madame … I’m not sure … I think you might be mistaking me for …’

‘No, it’s me, Mathilde Loisel.’

Her friend cried out: ‘Oh! My dear Mathilde! What a change … !’

‘Yes indeed. Hard times, I can tell you, since we last met. We’ve been through a lot. Much to do with you, I might add!’

‘What on earth d’you mean … to do with me?’

‘Well … you remember that diamond necklace you lent me to go to the Ministry of Education ball?’

‘Yes, of course. What about it?’

‘Well … I lost it.’