[2] [This epigram is also by Cotin. It is called, _'Madrigal sur un carosse de couleur amarante, acheté pour une dame.'_ "L'amour si chèrement m'a vendu son lien Qu'il me coûte déjà la moitié de mon bien, Et quand tu vois ce beau carrosse, Où tant d'or se relève en bosse, Qu'il étonne tout le pays, Et fait pompeusement triompher ma Laïs, Ne dis plus qu'il est amarante, Dis plutôt qu'il est de ma rente."] PHI. Ah! Laïs! what erudition! BEL. The cover is pretty, and worth a million. TRI. _And when this chariot meets your eyes, Where so much gold emboss'd doth rise That people all astonished stand, And Laïs rides in triumph through the land, Say no more it is amaranth, Say rather it is o' my rent._ ARM. Oh, oh, oh! this is beyond everything; who would have expected that? PHI. He is the only one to write in such taste. BEL. Say no more it is _amaranth, say rather it is o' my rent_! It can be declined; _my rent; of my rent; to my rent; from my rent_. PHI. I do not know whether I was prepossessed from the first moment I saw you, but I admire all your prose and verse whenever I see it. TRI. (_to_ PHILAMINTE). If you would only show us something of your composition, we could admire in our turn. PHI. I have done nothing in verse; but I have reason to hope that I shall, shortly, be able, as a friend, to show you eight chapters of the plan of our Academy. Plato only touched on the subject when he wrote the treatise of his Republic; but I will complete the idea as I have arranged it on paper in prose. For, in short, I am truly angry at the wrong which is done us in regard to intelligence; and I will avenge the whole sex for the unworthy place which men assign us by confining our talents to trifles, and by shutting the door of sublime knowledge against us. ARM. It is insulting our sex too grossly to limit our intelligence to the power of judging of a skirt, of the make of a garment, of the beauties of lace, or of a new brocade. BEL. We must rise above this shameful condition, and bravely proclaim our emancipation. TRI. Every one knows my respect for the fairer sex, and that if I render homage to the brightness of their eyes, I also honour the splendour of their intellect. PHI. And our sex does you justice in this respect: but we will show to certain minds who treat us with proud contempt that women also have knowledge; that, like men, they can hold learned meetings--regulated, too, by better rules; that they wish to unite what elsewhere is kept apart, join noble language to deep learning, reveal nature's laws by a thousand experiments; and on all questions proposed, admit every party, and ally themselves to none. TRI. For order, I prefer peripateticism. PHI. For abstractions I love Platonism. ARM. Epicurus pleases me, for his tenets are solid. BEL. I agree with the doctrine of atoms: but I find it difficult to understand a vacuum, and I much prefer subtile matter. TRI. I quite agree with Descartes about magnetism.