Women of this stamp could listen to novels like those of Bandello, without social intercourse suffering from it.The ruling genius of society was not, as now, womanhood, or the respect for certain presuppositions, mysteries, and susceptibilities, but the consciousness of energy, of beauty, and of a social state full of danger and opportunity.And for this reason we find, side by side with the most measured and polished social forms, something our age would call immodesty, forgetting that by which it was corrected and counter-balanced-- the powerful characters of the women who were exposed to it.
That in all the dialogues and treatises together we can find no absolute evidence on these points is only natural, however freely the nature of love and the position and capacities of women were discussed.
What seems to have been wanting in this society were the young girls who, even when not brought up in the monasteries, were still carefully kept away from it.It is not easy to say whether their absence was the cause of the greater freedom of conversation, or whether they were removed on account of it.
Even the intercourse with courtesans seems to have assumed a more elevated character, reminding us of the position of the Hetairae in classical Athens.The famous Roman courtesan Imperia was a woman of intelligence and culture, had learned from a certain Domenico Campana the art of making sonnets, and was not without musical accomplishments.