e 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!

Finally, beaten in a manner which may be called beaten, you determine
to risk a cer