“Why not?” replied Mangogul.
“Truly,” says Mirzoza, “if our Toys could explain all our whims, they would be more knowing than ourselves.”
“Pray, who disputes that with you?” replied the Sultan. “For my part I believe that the Toy makes a woman do a hundred things, without her perceiving it: and I have remark’d on more occasions than one, that a woman, who thought she was following her head, was obeying her Toy. A great philosopher placed the soul, I mean ours, in the pineal gland. If I allowed women to have one, I well know where I would place it.”
“I excuse you from informing me,” rejoin’d Mirzoza hastily.
“But you will permit me at least,” said Mangogul, “to communicate some notions to you, which my ring has suggested to me concerning women, upon a supposition that they have a soul. The experiments, which I have made with my ring, have made me a great moralist. I have neither the wit of La Bruyere, nor the logic of Port Royal, nor the imagination of Montaigne, nor the wisdom of Charron: but I have collected facts, to which perhaps they were strangers.”
“Speak, prince,” answered Mirzoza ironically, “I will hear you with all my ears. Moral essays of a Sultan of your age must be something curious.”
“The system of Orcotomus is extravagant, with the leave of his fellow academician Hiragu: yet I find some sense in the answers which he gave to the objections started against it. If I allowed a soul to women, I would willingly suppose with him, that Toys have spoken from the beginning, but softly: and that the effect of the Genius Cucufa’s ring is reduced to raising their voice. Upon this foundation nothing can be more easy than to define the whole sex.
“The sober woman, for example, would be she whose Toy is silent, or is not attended to.
“The prude, she who pretends not to listen to her Toy.
“The intriguing woman, she whose Toy desires a great deal, and who allows it too much.
“The voluptuous, she who gives ear to her Toy with complaisance.
“The courtesan, she on whom her Toy is making demands every moment, and who refuses it nothing.
“The coquette, she whose Toy is mute, or is not attended to; but who gives hopes to all the men that come near her, that her Toy will speak one day or other, and it may happen that she will not lend it a deaf ear.
“Well, delight of my soul, what do you think of my definitions?”
“I think,” said the favorite, “that your highness has forgot the tender woman.”
“If I have not mentioned her,” answered the Sultan, “ ’tis because I don’t know what the term means; and that some able men pretend, that the word tender, abstracting from all connection with the Toy, is void of sense.”
“How, void of sense,” cried Mirzoza. “What! there is no medium then; and a woman must absolutely be a prude, an intriguer, a coquette, a voluptuous woman, or a libertin.”
“Delight of my soul,” said the Sultan, “I am willing to own the inaccuracy of my enumeration, and will add the tender woman to the preceding characters; but on condition that you will furnish me with a definition of her, which will not coincide with any of mine.”
“Most willingly,” said Mirzoza. “I hope to compass it without quitting your system.”
“Let us see,” added Mangogul.
“Well then,” replied the favorite—“a tender woman is she—”
“Courage, Mirzoza,” said Mangogul.
“Oh! I beg you won’t disturb me. The tender woman is she—who has loved without a word utter’d by her Toy, or—whose Toy has never spoke, but in favor of the single man whom she loved.”
It would not have been polite in the Sultan to chicane the favorite, and ask her what she understood by love: wherefore he avoided it. Mirzoza took his silence for consent, and proceeded, proud of having extricated herself from a difficulty, which to her appeared considerable. “Ye men believe, because we do not argue in form, that we do not reason. Know once for all, that we could as easily discover the falsity of your paradoxes, as ye that of our reasonings, if we would give ourselves the trouble. If your highness was less in a hurry to satisfy your curiosity on the subject of lapdogs, I would in my turn give you a scrap of my philosophy. But it shall not be lost: I will reserve it for one of those days, that you will have more time to bestow on me.”
Mangogul assured her that he had no better business, than to profit of her philosophical notions; that the metaphysics of a Sultana of twenty two, ought not to be less singular than the morals of a Sultan of his age.
But Mirzoza apprehending that this was pure complaisance in Mangogul, begg’d some time to prepare, and thus gave the Sultan a pretext for flying whither his impatience might call him.
XXIII
Tenth Trial of the Ring
The Dogs
Mangogul went immediately to Haria’s house; and as he took pleasure in soliloquy, he said within himself: “This woman never goes to bed without her four dogs, and either Toys know nothing of those animals, or hers will give me some account of them; for, thank God, ’tis well known that she loves her dogs to admiration.” At the end of this monology he found himself in Haria’s antechamber, and his olfactory organ already informed him of madam having her usual company in bed with her. These were a little shag-dog, a spaniel, and two pug-dogs. The Sultan drew out his snuffbox, took two pinches of Spanish by way of preservative, and approached Haria. She was asleep, but the pack, who were upon the watch, hearing some noise, fell to barking, and woke her. “Peace, my children,” said she, but in so mild a tone, that she could not be suspected of speaking to her daughters,
