She, a Jesuit!  The very soul of honor and loyalty!  She a Jesuit!  What do you mean by “Jesuit?” She does not know what a Jesuit is:  what is a Jesuit?  She has never seen or heard of a Jesuit!  It’s you who are a Jesuit!  And she proves with jesuitical demonstration that you are a subtle Jesuit.

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!)