This is just what your wife will do.

How is it possible to get at the truth when each of you conceals it under the same lie, each setting the same trap for the other?  And whose will be the victory when each of you is caught in a similar snare?

“My dear, I have to go out; I have to pay a visit to Madame So and So.  I have ordered the carriage.  Would you like to come with me?  Come, be good, and go with your wife.”

You say to yourself: 

“She would be nicely caught if I consented!  She asks me only to be refused.”

Then you reply to her: 

“Just at the moment I have some business with Monsieur Blank, for he has to give a report in a business matter which deeply concerns us both, and I must absolutely see him.  Then I must go to the Minister of Finance.  So your arrangement will suit us both.”

“Very well, dearest, go and dress yourself, while Celine finishes dressing me; but don’t keep me waiting.”

“I am ready now, love,” you cry out, at the end of ten minutes, as you stand shaved and dressed.

But all is changed.  A letter has arrived; madame is not well; her dress fits badly; the dressmaker has come; if it is not the dressmaker it is your mother.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred husbands will leave the house satisfied, believing that their wives are well guarded, when, as a matter of fact, the wives have gotten rid of them.

A lawful wife who from her husband cannot escape, who is not distressed by pecuniary anxiety, and who in order to give employment to a vacant mind, examines night and day the changing tableaux of each day’s experience, soon discovers the mistake she has made in falling into a trap or allowing herself to be surprised by a catastrophe; she will then endeavor to turn all these weapons against you.

There is a man in society, the sight of whom is strangely annoying to your wife; she can tolerate neither his tone, his manners nor his way of regarding things.  Everything connected with him is revolting to her; she is persecuted by him, he is odious to her; she hopes that no one will tell him this.  It seems almost as if she were attempting to oppose you; for this man is one for whom you have the highest esteem.  You like his disposition because he flatters you; and thus your wife presumes that your esteem for him results from flattered vanity.  When you give a ball, an evening party or a concert, there is almost a discussion on this subject, and madame picks a quarrel with you, because you are compelling her to see people who are not agreeable to her.

“At least, sir, I shall never have to reproach myself with omitting to warn you.  That man will yet cause you trouble.  You should put some confidence in women when they pass sentence on the character of a man.  And permit me to tell you that this baron, for whom you have such a predilection, is a very dangerous person, and you are doing very wrong to bring him to your house.  And this is the way you behave; you absolutely force me to see one whom I cannot tolerate, and if I ask you to invite Monsieur A-----, you refuse to do so, because you think that I like to have him with me!  I admit that he talks well, that he is kind and amiable; but you are more to me than he can ever be.”