"To these gallantries Marsupha added others. I insensibly joined in the conversation; and when Marsupha had finished with me, he resumed with my mistress. 'Seriously, Amisadar has attempted your conversion; he has an admirable hand at conversions. Could you give me a sample of his morals? I would lay a wager they are much the same with mine.'----'We have thoroughly handled some points of gallantry. We have analysed the difference between an affectionate woman and a woman of gallantry. He is for the affectionate women'----'And you too without doubt?'----'Not at all, my dear. I took great pains to demonstrate to him, that we were all alike, and that we acted upon the same principles: but he is not of this opinion. He establishes an infinity of distinctions, which, I think, exist nowhere but in his imagination. He has formed to himself, I can't tell what ideal creature, a chimæra of a woman, a non-entity in a coif.'----'Madam,' answered Marsupha, 'I know Amisadar. He is a lad of good sense, and has been very conversant with the sex. If he has told you that there were such'----'Oh! whether there are such or not,' interrupted Fannia, 'I could never conform to their customs.'----'I believe it,' said Marsupha: 'and accordingly you have chosen another sort of conduct more suitable to your birth and merit. Those silly creatures are to be abandoned to philosophers: they would never be look'd on at court.----"
Here Fannia's Toy stopt short. One of the principal perfections of these orators was to break off their discourse _à propos_. They talk'd as if they had never done any thing else: whence some authors have inferr'd, that they were pure machines. In this place the African author specifies all the metaphysical arguments of the Cartesians against the soul of brutes, which he applies with all possible sagacity to the prating of Toys. In a word, his opinion is, that Toys speak as birds sing; that is to say, so perfectly without having been taught, that, to be sure, they are prompted by some superior intelligence.
But you ask me how he disposes of his prince. He sends him to dine with the favorite: at least 'tis there we shall find him in the following chapter.
Mangogul, whose thoughts ran solely on diversifying his pleasures, and multiplying the trials of his ring; after having interrogated the most interesting Toys of the court, had the curiosity to hear some of the city Toys. But as he had no advantageous opinion of what his should learn from them, he would willingly consult them at his ease, and save himself the trouble of going to find them out.