Upon receiving an invitation to a ball, Madame Loisel buys a new dress and borrows a necklace from a friend. She has a lovely time at the ball dancing and attracting the attention of the gentlemen. As she and her husband return home, she realizes she is no longer wearing the necklace. They search their clothing, and her husband retraces their steps, but they are unable to find it. After finding a similar necklace at a shop, Madame Loisel and her husband pay thirty-six thousand francs for a replacement.
Madame Loisel's husband has eighteen thousand francs from an inheritance but has to borrow the remainder of the money. In order to pay back the money, he continues his position as a clerk in the Ministry of Education and works evenings as an accountant and a copier.
In the opening paragraph of Guy de Maupassant's short story "The Necklace" it is revealed that Madame Loisel married a "minor civil servant at the Ministry of Education." In other words, Loisel is a bureaucrat for the French department of education. It is the reason why he is able to procure an invitation to the fancy ball at the Ministry where Madame Loisel loses the necklace. After failing to recover the lost necklace Monsieur and Madame Loisel sink into a life of poverty because they have to repay the debt incurred in replacing Madame Forestier's necklace. They have to give up their comfortable apartment and dismiss their maid. In order to pay back the debt, plus "exorbitant" interest rates, Monsieur Loisel not only works his day job at the Ministry but also takes on two night jobs working as an accountant and a copier (in a time before copy machines):
Her husband worked in the evenings, putting a shopkeeper's ledgers in order, and often at night as well, doing copying at twenty-five centimes a page.
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