Carpe Diem

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

Madame Loisel looked old now. She had become the woman of impoverished households - Strong and Hard and Rough. With frowzy hair, skirts askew, and red hands, she talked loud while washing the floor with great swishes of water. Sometimes however, when her husband was at the office, she sat down near the window and thought of that gay evening 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 how changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!

But one Sunday, having gone to take a walk in the Champs Elysees to refresh herself from the labors of the week, she suddenly perceived a woman who was leading a child. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still charming.

Madame Loisel felt moved. Was she going to speak to her? Yes, certainly, and now that she had paid, she was going to tell her all about it. Why not?

She went up. "Good-day, Jeanne."

The other, astonished to be familiarily addressed by this plain goodwife, did not recognize her at all, and stammered.

"But madame! I do not know. You must have mistaken."
"No, I am Mathilde Loisel."
Her friend uttered a cry.
"Oh my poor Mathilde! How you are changed!"
"Yes, I have had days hard enough, since I have seen you. Days wretched enough, and that because of you!"
"Of me! How so?"
"Do you remember that diamond necklace which you lent me to wear at the minister balll?"
"Yes, well?"
"Well, I lost it."
"What do you mean? You brought it back."
"I brought you back another just like it. And for this, we have been ten years paying. You can understand that it was not easy for us, us who had nothing. At last it is ended, and I am very glad."

Madame Forestier had stopped.
"You say that you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"
"Yes, you never noticed it then! The were very like."
And she smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once.
Madame Forestier, strongly moved, took her two hands.
"Oh my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste. It was worth at most five hundred francs!"

-Maupassant-