were out of the church she asked me if I
knew her. I replied in the affirmative, and she asked why I had not been
to see her, and if I visited the Duchess of Benevento. I told her that I
did not visit her grace, and that I should have the honour of paying her
a call before long.

On our way I explained to my two companions the nature of the duchess's
malady. Donna Ignazia asked me anxiously if I really meant to go and see
her. She seemed reassured when I replied in the negative.

A common and to my mind a ridiculous question is which of the two sexes
enjoys the generative act the more. Homer gives us Jupiter and Juno
disputing on this point. Tiresias, who was once a woman, has given a
correct though amusing decision on the point. A laconic answer has it
that a woman enjoys the act the most because with her it is sharper,
repeated more frequently, and finally because the battle is fought in her
field. She is at the same time an active and passive agent, while action
is indispensable to the pleasure of the man. But the most conclusive
reason is that if the woman's pleasure were not the greater nature would
be unjust, and she never is or can be unjust. Nothing in this universe is
without its use, and no pleasure or pain is without its compensation or
balance. If woman had not more pleasure than man she would not have more
organs than he. The greater nervous power planted in the female organ is
demonstrated by the andromania to which some women are subject, and which
makes them either Messalines or martyrs. Men have nothing at all similar
to this.

Nature has given to women this special enjoyment to compensate for the
pains they have to undergo. What man would expose himself, for the
pleasure he enjoys, to the pains of pregnancy and the dangers of
childbed? But women will do so again and again; so it must be concluded
that they believe the pleasure to outbalance the pain; and so it is
clearly the woman who has the better share in the enjoyment. In spite of
this, if I had the choice of being born again as a woman, I should say
no; for in spite of my voluptuousness, a man has pleasures which a woman
cannot enjoy. Though, indeed, rather than not be born again, I would be a
woman, and even a brute, provided always that I had my memory, for
without it I should no longer be myself.

We had some ices, and my two companions returned home with me, well
pleased with the enjoyment I had given them without offending God. Donna
Ign