"Alessandro sat up straight. "How is it you think babies are born?" "Something the mother and father do before sex, some sort of cloth or herb or hard-boiled egg that the father puts in the mother or something, with a rubber bulb and a glass dish." "No," Alessandro said. "That's not quite it." "No?" "No. You just have to have sex--if you're married, fifty times; if you're not married, once." "You're kidding!"