An elegant fable for the modern age, Louise de Vilmorin's novella Madame de is a poignant tale of honour, deception and fate. This is the story of Madame de's earrings. It is a story of jewellery, of love, of denial, of pain, of delight, of society, that has the simplicity of a fairy tale, the elegance of an eighteenth century roman-a-clef and the particular echoing loneliness that is a phenomenon of the twentieth century: the circle of deceit that society allows proves fatal to the honesty of intense passion.