La Parure - The Ornament - The Necklace - Maupassant's Masterpiece
Don't fall for this (excuse my ...) : Brander Matthews (18521929). The Short-Story. 1907. Here's the corrected version : The Necklace By Guy de Maupassant SHE was one of those pretty and charming girls, born by a blunder of destiny in a family of employees. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, married by a man rich and distinguished; and she let herself be married to a lowly clerk in the Department of Education. She dressed simply since she could not be adorned; but she was unhappy as though fallen from a higher class; for women have no caste and no descent, their beauty, their grace, and their charm serving them instead of birth and fortune. Their native keenness, their instinctive elegance, their flexibility of mind, are their only hierarchy; and these make the daughters of the people the equals of the most lofty dames. She suffered intensely, feeling herself born for every delicacy and every luxury. She suffered from the poverty of...