Loisel possessed eighteen thousand francs left to him by his father. He intended to
borrow the rest.
He did borrow it, getting a thousand from one man, five hundred from another, five
louis here, three louis there. He gave notes of hand, entered into ruinous agreements, did
business with usurers and the whole tribe of money-tenders. He mortgaged the whole
remaining years of his existence, risked his signature without even knowing if he could
honour it, and, appalled at the agonising face of the future, at the black misery about to
fall upon him, at the prospect of every possible physical privation and moral torture, he
went to get the new neck[ace and put down upon the jeweller's counter thirty-six
thousand francs.
When Madame Loisel took back the neck[ace to Madame Forestier, the latter said to
her in a chilly voice:
"You ought to have brought it back sooner; I might have needed it." .
She did not, as her friend had feared, open the case. lf she had noticed the
substitution, what would she have thought? What would she have said? Would she not
have taken her for a thief?
Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of abject poverty. From the very first she
played her part heroically. This fearful debt must be paid off. She would pay it. The
servant was dismissed. They changed their f[at; they took a garret under the roof.
She came to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen. She
washed the plates, wearing out her pink nails on the coarse pottery and the bottoms of
pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts and dish-cloths, and hung them out to dry on
a string; every morning she took the dustbin down into the street and carried up the
water, stopping on each landing to get her breath. And, clad like a poor woman, she went
to the fruiterer, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted,
fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.
Every month notes had to be paid off, others renewed, time gained.
Her husband worked in the evenings at putting straight a merchant's accounts, and
often at night he did copying at twopence-halfpenny a page.
And this life lasted ten years.
At the end of ten years everything was paid off, everything, the usurer's charges and
the accumulation of superimposed interest.
Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become like all the other strong, hard,
coarse women of poor households. Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her
hands were red. She spoke in a shrill voice, and the water slopped all over the floor when