At the end of a week they had lost all hope.
And Loisel, looking five years older, declared:
"We must consider how to replace the necklace."
The next day they took the box which had contained it, and went to the place of the jeweller whose name they found inside. He consulted his books.
"It was not I, madame, who sold the necklace; I must simply have furnished the casket."
Then they went from jeweller to jeweller, looking for an ornament like the other, consulting their memories, both sick with grief and anguish.
They found, in a shop at the Palais Royal, a string of diamonds which seemed to them exactly what they were looking for. It was worth forty thousand francs.[*] They could have it for thirty-six thousand.
[* A franc is equal to twenty cents of our money.]
So they begged the jeweller not to sell it for three days. And they made an arrangement that he should take it back for thirty-four thousand francs if the other were found before the end of February.
Loisel had eighteen thousand francs which his father had left him. He would borrow the rest.