The Ordeal

 (Previous  paragraphs)

  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 dishcloths, 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 she scrubbed it. But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago, of the ball at which she had been so beautiful and so much admired.

  What would have happened if she had never lost those jewels. Who knows? Who knows? How strange life is, how fickle! How little is needed to ruin or to save! 

 One Sunday, as she had gone for a walk along the Champs-Elysees to freshen herself after the labours of the week, she caught sight suddenly of a woman who was taking a child out for a walk. It was Madame Forestier, still young, still beautiful, still attractive.

  Madame Loisel was conscious of some emotion. Should she speak to her? Yes, certainly. And now that she had paid, she would tell her all. Why not?

  She went up to her. "Good morning, Jeanne." 

 The other did not recognise her, and was surprised at being thus familiarly addressed by a poor woman. "But . . . Madame . . ." she stammered. "I don't know . . . you must be making a mistake." 

 "No . . . I am Mathilde Loisel." 

 Her friend uttered a cry. "Oh! . . . my poor Mathilde, how you have changed! . . ."

  "Yes, I've had some hard times since I saw you last; and many sorrows . . . and all on your account." 
"On my account! . . . How was that?"

  "You remember the diamond necklace you lent me for the ball at the Ministry?" 

 "Yes. Well?" 

 "Well, I lost it." "How could you? Why, you brought it back." 
"I brought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we have been paying for it. You realise it wasn't easy for us; we had no money. . . . Well, it's paid for at last, and I'm glad indeed." 

 Madame Forestier had halted. "You say you bought a diamond necklace to replace mine?" 

 "Yes. You hadn't noticed it? They were very much alike." And she smiled in proud and innocent happiness. 

 Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her two hands. "Oh, my poor Mathilde! But mine was imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs! . . . "
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Madame Loisel was shocked, unquestionably shocked. She had spent several years of her life just to pay off her debt to Mme. Forestier, only to find out what she had thought was genuine, was actually fake. She had ruined her life over a piece of paste, a replica. Before she was invited to the party, her life may have not been flashy as the other attendees, but she hadn’t led a life of poverty either. 

She always knew, in the hidden parts of her heart, that she may have been the most selfish person that she knew and that she deserved what she had to suffer through. She had been blinded by her desire to be rich, she should have accepted her situation in life and live it to the fullest.

 Oh, and her husband, what a poor fellow! For one of the first times in her life, Loisel tried to feel empathy for her husband, to imagine how he felt throughout the whole ten-year ordeal. A tremendous wave of guilt spread over Loisel, she had made her husband bear the weight of her foolish mistake. Her husband worked two jobs for ten years, just to make his wife satisfied, while Loisel had also toiled away, only to yield no results.

  If only she had confronted Forestier much earlier, she could have saved herself and her husband. 

 She looked at Madame Forestier and the innocent look on her face. She had not known the full extent of emotions Loisel had felt. She looked back down at her raggedy, hands, worn out by several years of overuse. She looked back at Forestier. She looked at the Mirror, she saw that the beauty she once had was no longer in her possession. It was as if she had aged 20 years rather than the 10 she would have normally. 

 The irony, she had not lost only her dreams in life, but her looks too! Loisel took one last glimpse at the face of Forestier, and she ran. She ran in her old, beaten up clothes. She covered her face as she ran through the streets of Paris. She felt as if it had been too late to fix her life, to her, the damage was irreversible. 

She had now lost the will to go on.





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