The Necklace · Class 10 English · Footprints Without Feet: 60 flashcards

Guy de Maupassant.

As one of those pretty young women born into a family of clerks, as though fate had mislaid her — with no dowry, no expectations and no way of meeting a rich or distinguished man.

A petty clerk in the office of the Board of Education.

That she was simple, but she was unhappy.

Because she feels she was born for delicacies and luxuries and measures her life against an imagined finer one. The shabby walls and worn chairs of her flat torture and anger her; she has no frocks and no jewels, and those are the only things she loves.

Continuously.

Her husband uncovers the soup with a delighted air and says he knows nothing better, while she sits opposite imagining elegant dinners, shining silver and exquisite food in marvellous dishes.

A covered dish from which soup is served at the table.

Because she suffered so much when she returned — she would weep for whole days from despair and disappointment. She kept visiting all the same.

A large envelope containing an invitation, which he handed over delightedly.

The Minister of Public Instruction and Madame George Ramponneau, for Monday evening, 18 January, at the Minister's residence.

She threw it spitefully on the table and asked what he supposed she wanted with it.

He said she never went out, that it was a fine and very select occasion, that not many were given to employees, and that she would see the whole official world there.

That she had nothing to wear. When he suggested her theatre dress she burst into tears and told him to give the card to a colleague whose wife was better fitted out.

She thought for a few seconds about the largest amount she could name without bringing an immediate refusal and a frightened exclamation from an economical clerk.

Four hundred francs.

Because he had saved exactly that sum to buy a gun, so that he could join friends who went to shoot larks on Sundays the following summer.

That she should have it — and asked only that she try to get a pretty dress.

Modest, easily contented and generous: delighted by simple soup, pleased to have obtained an invitation few employees get, and willing to give up his own savings without being asked twice.

No — modest rather than destitute. They have a flat, a servant, and savings of four hundred francs, and they are invited to the Minister's residence. Matilda's suffering comes from comparison, not from want.

That she had no jewel of any kind to wear. She said she would have a poverty-stricken look and would rather not go to the party at all.

Natural flowers, which he said looked very chic in that season.

Because, as she put it, there is nothing so humiliating as looking shabby when the women around you are rich.

Her husband thought of it: she should go to her friend Mme Forestier and ask to borrow her jewels. Matilda gave a cry of joy and went the next day.

She went to her closet, brought out a large jewel-case, opened it and told Matilda to choose.

First some bracelets; then a pearl collar; then a Venetian cross made of gold and jewels, beautifully worked.

By asking whether there was nothing more — and then discovering a superb necklace of diamonds in a black satin box.

Her hands trembled as she took it out; she put it on against her dress and was ecstatic, then asked in an anxious voice whether she could borrow this, and only this.

That she certainly could — she agreed at once, without asking a single question.

As a triumph. She was the prettiest woman in the room — elegant, gracious, smiling, full of joy — and every man there noticed her, asked who she was and wanted an introduction.

She danced enthusiastically and was intoxicated with pleasure, her mind on nothing but the admiration she was getting and a victory that felt complete.

He had been half asleep since midnight in one of the little salons, with three other gentlemen whose wives were enjoying themselves very much.

At about four o'clock in the morning.

Because her husband had thrown the modest wraps over her shoulders, whose poverty clashed with the elegance of her ball dress, and she did not want to be seen by the other women, who were putting expensive furs round their shoulders.

He told her to stay while he called a cab; she would not listen and went rapidly down the steps.

They found no carriage at first and hailed coachmen at a distance; they walked towards the river, hopeless and shivering, and at last found one of those old carriages that are seen in Paris only after nightfall.

That the office expected him at ten.

She removed the wraps in front of the glass for one last look at herself in her splendour, and then cried out — the necklace was no longer around her neck.

The story never says. She felt it as they came out of the Minister's house; after that came the steps, the search for a cab, the walk to the river and the old carriage — and neither of them had taken the cab's number.

It gives Matilda exactly what she has wanted since the story began — admiration, elegance, a complete social victory — and it is the direct cause of ten years of poverty.

In the folds of the dress, the folds of the cloak, in the pockets — everywhere in the flat. They could not find it.

Because his wife had felt it as they came out of the Minister's house, and if it had fallen in the street they would have heard it fall.

Neither of them had noticed its number.

He dressed again and walked the whole route they had taken on foot, returning at seven with nothing; then he went to the police and the cab companies, and advertised in the papers with a reward attached.

That she should write to Mme Forestier saying she had broken the clasp of the necklace and was having it repaired — to give them time.

That the jewel must be replaced. Loisel, the story says, was older by five years when he said it.

In a shop of the Palais-Royal: a chaplet of diamonds that seemed exactly like the lost one, valued at forty thousand francs and obtainable for thirty-six thousand.

He had eighteen thousand francs left him by his father, and borrowed the rest — making ruinous promises and taking money from usurers and the whole race of lenders.

Money-lenders, especially those who lend money at a high rate of interest.

In a frigid tone, saying only that Matilda should have returned it sooner as she might have needed it — and she did not open the case.

That her friend might perceive the substitution — and what she would then think, what she would say, and whether she would take her for a robber.

They sent away the maid, changed their lodgings and rented rooms in an attic; Matilda took on all the housework herself while her husband worked in the evenings and at night.

The odious work of a kitchen — washing dishes, soiled linen, clothes and dishcloths hung out to dry; carrying the refuse down each morning and the water up, stopping at each landing to catch her breath; and shopping with a basket on her arm, haggling to the last sou.

He worked in the evenings putting merchants' books in order, and at night he often did copying at five sous a page.

Ten years — by the end of which every franc had been repaid.

She seemed old — a tough, hardened woman, the coarse sort found in a poor household, with her hair badly dressed, her skirts awry and her hands went red; her voice grew loud, and she swilled the floors down with great pails of water.

When her husband was at the office she would sit by the window and think of that evening long ago, of the ball where she was so beautiful and so flattered.

Matilda greeted her friend by name, and Mme Forestier — still young, still pretty — did not recognise her, and was astonished to be addressed so familiarly by such a common-looking person.

She said she had had hard and miserable days because of her, explained that she had lost the borrowed necklace and returned another exactly like it, and that it had taken ten years to pay for — smiling with proud and simple joy.

That her own necklace was false — it was not worth more than five hundred francs.