An elegant fable for the modern age, Louise de Vilmorin`s novella Madame de is a poignant tale of honour, deception & 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 & 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. This novella became The Earrings of Madame de, a 1952 film directed by Max Ophuls. Translated from the French by Duff Cooper, Louise de Vilmorin`s Madame de is published by Pushkin Press Louise de Vilmorin (1902-1969), born in her family`s chateau at Verrieres-le-Buisson, Essonne, was a French novelist & poet, & the most extraordinary of women. Married to a Hungarian count, her lovers included Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Orson Welles & Andre Malraux. But it was Duff Cooper, British Ambassador to France, during the 1940s, who was the love of her life, & the translator of this novella. John Julius Norwich, his son, describes in his moving afterword the menage a trois that he remembers as a child at the British Embassy in Paris.