"Close intellectual relations between man and woman cannot as yet be developed, owing to the generally low education of woman, to her subordination, and to her intellectual bondage. While still in the schools the boy is trained for political life. The average Italian woman participates in politics even less than the German woman; her influence is purely moral. If the Italian woman wishes to accept any office in a society, she must have the consent of her husband attested by a notary. Just as in ancient times, the non-professional interests of the husband are, in great part, elsewhere than at home. The opportunity daily to discuss political and other current questions with men companions is found by the German man in the smaller cities while taking his evening pint of beer. The Italian man finds this opportunity sometimes in the café, sometimes in the public places, where every evening the men congregate for hours. So the educated man in Italy (even more than in Germany) has no need of the intellectual qualities of his wife. Moreover, his need for an educated wife is the less because his misguided precocity prevents him from acquiring anything but an essentially general education. The restricted intellectual relationship between husband and wife is explained partly by the fact that the _cicisbeo_[90] still exists. This relation ought to be, and generally is, Platonic and publicly known. The wife permits her friend (the _cicisbeo_) to escort her to the theater and elsewhere in a carriage; the husband also escorts a woman friend. So husband and wife share the inwardly moral unsoundness of the medieval service of love (_Minnedienst_). At any rate this custom reveals the fact that after the honeymoon the husband and wife do not have overmuch to say to each other. In this way there takes place, to a certain extent, an open relinquishment of the postulate that, in accordance with the external indissolubility of married life, there ought to be permanent intellectual bonds between man and wife,--a postulate that is the source of the most serious conscience struggles, but which has caused the great moral development of the northern woman."[91]