Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him.  He would borrow the rest.

He did borrow, asking a thousand francs of one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there.  He gave notes, took up ruinous obligations, dealt with usurers, and all the race of lenders.  He compromised all the rest of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could meet it; and, frightened by the pains yet to come, by the black misery which was about to fall upon him, by the prospect of all the physical privations and of all the moral tortures which he was to suffer, he went to get the new necklace, putting down upon the merchant’s counter thirty-six thousand francs.

When Mme. Loisel took back the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her, with a chilly manner: 

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

She did not open the case, as her friend had so much feared.  If she had detected the substitution, what would she have thought, what would she have said?  Would she not have taken Mme. Loisel for a thief?

Mme. Loisel now knew the horrible existence of the needy.  She took her part, moreover, all on a sudden, with heroism.  That dreadful debt must be paid.  She would pay it.  They dismissed their servant; they changed their lodgings; they rented a garret under the roof.

She came to know what heavy housework meant and the odious cares of the kitchen.  She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans.  She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, and the dish-cloths, which she dried upon a line; she carried the slops down to the street every morning, and carried up the water, stopping for breath at every landing.  And, dressed like a woman of the people, she went to the fruiterer, the grocer, the butcher, her basket on her arm, bargaining, insulted, defending her miserable money sou by sou.

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

Her husband worked in the evening making a fair copy of some tradesman’s accounts, and late at night he often copied manuscript for five sous a page.

And this life lasted ten years.

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

Mme. Loisel looked old now.  She had become the woman of impoverished households—­strong and hard and rough.  With frowsy hair, skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water.  But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window, and she thought of that gay evening of long ago, of that ball where she had been so beautiful and so feted.

What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace?  Who knows? who knows?  How life is strange and changeful!  How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!