Starting from an anthropological reading of the short novel Madame de*** by Louise de Vilmorin (1951), the author examines the notion of object. He studies more largely the construction of the value of material precious objects through the changes of their social status. Madame de*** traces the history of an indebted female aristocrat caught in the trap of her lies about the loss of a pair of earrings. The complicated course of these lost jewels enables us to size up their perpetual variations of meaning. Furthermore, this story shows that the preciousness of things is not intrinsic to them, but lies also in the values—in the exchange and symbolic production—attributed to them by their users.