Here is one of the thousand examples of a woman’s jesuitism, and this example constitutes the most terrible of the petty troubles of married life; it is perhaps the most serious.

Induced by a desire the thousandth time expressed by Caroline, who complained that she had to go on foot or that she could not buy a new hat, a new parasol, a new dress, or any other article of dress, often enough: 

That she could not dress her baby as a sailor, as a lancer, as an artilleryman of the National Guard, as a Highlander with naked legs and a cap and feather, in a jacket, in a roundabout, in a velvet sack, in boots, in trousers:  that she could not buy him toys enough, nor mechanical moving mice and Noah’s Arks enough: 

That she could not return Madame Deschars or Madame de Fischtaminel their civilities, a ball, a party, a dinner:  nor take a private box at the theatre, thus avoiding the necessity of sitting cheek by jowl with men who are either too polite or not enough so, and of calling a cab at the close of the performance; apropos of which she thus discourses: 

“You think it cheaper, but you are mistaken:  men are all the same!  I soil my shoes, I spoil my hat, my shawl gets wet and my silk stockings get muddy.  You economize twenty francs by not having a carriage,—­no not twenty, sixteen, for your pay four for the cab—­and you lose fifty francs’ worth of dress, besides being wounded in your pride on seeing a faded bonnet on my head:  you don’t see why it’s faded, but it’s those horrid cabs.  I say nothing of the annoyance of being tumbled and jostled by a crowd of men, for it seems you don’t care for that!”

That she could not buy a piano instead of hiring one, nor keep up with the fashions; (there are some women, she says, who have all the new styles, but just think what they give in return!  She would rather throw herself out of the window than imitate them!  She loves you too much.  Here she sheds tears.  She does not understand such women).  That she could not ride in the Champs Elysees, stretched out in her own carriage, like Madame de Fischtaminel. (There’s a woman who understands life:  and who has a well-taught, well-disciplined and very contented husband:  his wife would go through fire and water for him!)

Finally, beaten in a thousand conjugal scenes, beaten by the most logical arguments (the late logicians Tripier and Merlin were nothing to her, as the preceding chapter has sufficiently shown you), beaten by the most tender caresses, by tears, by your own words turned against you, for under circumstances like these, a woman lies in wait in her house like a jaguar in the jungle; she does not appear to listen to you, or to heed you; but if a single word, a wish, a gesture, escapes you, she arms herself with it, she whets it to an edge, she brings it to bear upon you a hundred times over; beaten by such graceful tricks as “If you will do so and so, I will do this and that;” for women, in these cases, become greater bargainers than the Jews and Greeks (those, I mean, who sell perfumes and little girls), than the Arabs (those, I mean, who sell little boys and horses), greater higglers than the Swiss and the Genevese, than bankers, and, what is worse than all, than the Genoese!