She wrote as he told her.
By the end of the week they had given up all hope. Loisel, who looked five years older, said, "We must plan how we can replace the necklace."
The next day they took the black satin box to the jeweler whose name was found inside. He referred to his books.
"You did not buy that necklace of me, Madame. I can only have supplied the case."
They went from jeweler to jeweler, hunting for a necklace like the lost one, trying to remember its appearance, heartsick with shame and misery. Finally, in a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string of diamonds which looked to them just like the other. The price was forty thousand francs, but they could have it for thirty-six thousand. They begged the jeweler to keep it three days for them, and made an agreement with him that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand, francs if they found the lost necklace before the last of February.
Loisel had inherited eighteen thousand francs from his father. He could borrow the remainder. And he did borrow right and left, asking a thousand francs from one, five hundred of another, five louis here, three louis there. He gave notes, assumed heavy obligations, trafficked with money-lenders at usurious rates, and, putting the rest of his life in pawn, pledged his signature over and over again. Not knowing how he was to make it all good, and terrified by the penalty yet to come, by the dark destruction which hung over him, by the certainty of incalculable deprivations of body and tortures of soul, he went to get the new bauble, throwing down upon the jeweler's counter the thirty-six thousand francs.
When Mme. Loisel returned the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her coldly: "Why did you not bring it back sooner? I might have wanted it."
She did not open the case—to the great relief of her friend.
Supposing she had! Would she have discovered the substitution, and what would she have said? Would she not have accused Mme. Loisel of theft?