"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 courtezan, 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."