“I maintain,” Timon went on, “that the married woman, by devoting herself to a man who deceives her, by refusing herself to all others (or by committing adultery very rarely, which comes to the same thing), by giving birth to children who deform her before they see the light and monopolise her when they are born,—I maintain that by living thus a woman destroys her life without merit, and that on her wedding-day a young girl concludes a dupe’s bargain.” “She acts in fancied obedience to a duty,” said Naukrates without conviction. “A duty? and to whom? Is she not free to settle a question which concerns nobody but herself? She is a woman, and in virtue of her sex is generally insensible to the pleasures of the intellect; and not content with remaining a stranger to one half of human joys, she excludes herself, by her marriage, from the other aspect of pleasure. Thus a young girl can say to herself, at the age when she is all passion: ‘I shall know my husband, and in addition, ten lovers, perhaps twelve’, and believe that she will die without having regretted anything? Three thousand women will not be enough for me on the day I take my leave of life.” “You are ambitious,” said Chrysis. ill-050 “But with what incense, with what golden poesy,” exclaimed the gentle Philodemos, “should we not praise to eternity the beneficent courtesans! Thanks to them, we escape all the complicated precautions, the jealousies, the stratagems, the throbbings of the heart that accompany adultery. It is they who spare us hours of waiting in the rain, rickety ladders, secret doors, interrupted meetings, and intercepted letters and misunderstood signals. O! dear creatures, how I love you! With you there are no sieges to be undertaken: for a few little coins you give us what another would hardly be capable of granting us as a condescension, after three weeks of coldness. For your enlightened souls, love is not a sacrifice, it is an equal favour exchanged by two lovers, and so the sums we confide to you do not serve to compensate you for your priceless caresses, but to pay at its proper price for the multiple and charming luxury with which, by a supreme complaisance, you pacify nightly our ravenous passions. As you are innumerable, we always find amongst you both the dream of our lives and our fancy for the evening, all women at a day’s notice, hair of every shade, eyes of every colour, lips of every savour. There is no love under heaven so pure that you cannot feign it, nor so revolting that you dare not propose it. You are tender to the disreputable, consolatory to the afflicted, hospitable to all, and beautiful! That is why I tell you, Chrysis, Bacchis, Seso, Faustina, that it is a just law of the gods which decrees that courtesans shall be the eternal desire of lovers and the eternal envy of virtuous spouses.” The dancing-girls had ceased dancing.