“And what do you wish me to put on my back?”

He had not thought of that.  He stammered: 

“Why, the gown you go to the theatre in.  It looks very well to me.”

He stopped, distracted, seeing that his wife was weeping.  Two great tears ran slowly from the corners of her eyes toward the corners of her mouth.

“What’s the matter?  What’s the matter?” he answered.

By a violent effort she conquered her grief and replied in a calm voice, while she wiped her wet cheeks: 

“Nothing.  Only I have no gown, and, therefore, I can’t go to this ball.  Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I am.”

He was in despair.  He resumed: 

“Come, let us see, Mathilde.  How much would it cost, a suitable gown, which you could use on other occasions—­something very simple?”

She reflected several seconds, making her calculations and wondering also what sum she could ask without drawing on herself an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from the economical clerk.

Finally she replied hesitating: 

“I don’t know exactly, but I think I could manage it with four hundred francs.”

He grew a little pale, because he was laying aside just that amount to buy a gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of Nanterre, with several friends who went to shoot larks there of a Sunday.

But he said: 

“Very well.  I will give you four hundred francs.  And try to have a pretty gown.”

The day of the ball drew near and Madame Loisel seemed sad, uneasy, anxious.  Her frock was ready, however.  Her husband said to her one evening: 

“What is the matter?  Come, you have seemed very queer these last three days.”

And she answered: 

“It annoys me not to have a single piece of jewelry, not a single ornament, nothing to put on.  I shall look poverty-stricken.  I would almost rather not go at all.”

“You might wear natural flowers,” said her husband.  “They’re very stylish at this time of year.  For ten francs you can get two or three magnificent roses.”

She was not convinced.

“No; there’s nothing more humiliating than to look poor among other women who are rich.”

“How stupid you are!” her husband cried.  “Go look up your friend, Madame Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels.  You’re intimate enough with her to do that.”

She uttered a cry of joy: 

“True!  I never thought of it.”

The next day she went to her friend and told her of her distress.

Madame Forestier went to a wardrobe with a mirror, took out a large jewel box, brought it back, opened it and said to Madame Loisel: 

“Choose, my dear.”

She saw first some bracelets, then a pearl necklace, then a Venetian gold cross set with precious stones, of admirable workmanship.  She tried on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated and could not make up her mind to part with them, to give them back.  She kept asking: