He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there.  He gave notes, made ruinous engagements, dealt with usurers, with all the tribe of money-lenders.  He compromised the rest of his life, risked his signature without knowing if he might not be involving his honor, and, terrified by the anguish yet to come, by the black misery about to fall upon him, by the prospect of every physical privation and every mental torture, he went to get the new necklace, and laid down on the dealer’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Madame Loisel took the necklace back to Madame Forestier, the latter said coldly: 

“You should have returned it sooner, for I might have needed it.”

She did not open the case, to the relief of her friend.  If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought?  What would she have said?  Would she have taken her friend for a thief?

* * * * *

Madame Loisel now knew the horrible life of the needy.  But she took her part heroically.  They must pay this frightful debt.  She would pay it.  They dismissed their maid; they gave up their room; they rented another, under the roof.

She came to know the drudgery of housework, the odious labors of the kitchen.  She washed the dishes, staining her rosy nails on the greasy pots and the bottoms of the saucepans.  She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and the dishcloths, which she hung to dry on a line; she carried the garbage down to the street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping at each landing to rest.  And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer’s, the grocer’s, the butcher’s, her basket on her arm, bargaining, abusing, defending sou[*] by sou her miserable money.

[* A sou, or five-centime piece, is equal to one cent of our money.]

Each month they had to pay some notes, renew others, obtain more time.

The husband worked every evening, neatly footing up the account books of some tradesman, and often far into the night he sat copying manuscript at five sous a page.

And this life lasted ten years.

At the end of ten years they had paid everything,—­everything, with the exactions of usury and the accumulations of compound interest.

Madame Loisel seemed aged now.  She had become the woman of impoverished households,—­strong and hard and rough.  With hair half combed, with skirts awry, and reddened hands, she talked loud 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 changeful!  How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!