Even more notorious was "La Retorica delle puttane" ("The Rhetoric of Whores"), which Muir describes as a "scandalous anti-Jesuit work", which "demonstrates why Pallavicino was the only Italian author of his epoch capable of a coherent vision that integrated satire, skepticism, and naturalistic morality." "La Retorica" is written in the form of a dialogue between an aged prostitute and her naive apprentice. The older woman is sick, poor, and miserable because, she explains, she "did not know to stop at rhetoric, wanting to go on to learn philosophy." Muir explains, "By 'rhetoric,' she means the arts of simulation and dissimulation, which would have brought her pleasure and riches, without danger, while philosophy, with its pretension to discovering truth, has brought her the ruin of emotional authenticity." The fifteen lessons of the old whore were based on Cipriano Suarez's "De arte rhetorica", the manual used in Jesuit schools. Muir pointedly notes, "By systematically pursuing the parallels between rhetorical persuasion and erotic seduction, Pallavicino demonstrates how the high art of rhetoric has the same instrumental character as the lowly deceptions of the prostitute."