MAN 203 MAN IN THE IRON MASK 204 MARRIAGE 210 MASTER 211 MEN OF LETTERS 214 METAMORPHOSIS 216 MILTON, ON THE REPROACH OF PLAGIARISM AGAINST 217 MOHAMMEDANS 220 MOUNTAIN 221
NAKEDNESS 222 NATURAL LAW 224 NATURE 227 NECESSARY 231 NEW NOVELTIES 236
PHILOSOPHER 237 POWER, OMNIPOTENCE 240 PRAYERS 245 PRÉCIS OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 247 PREJUDICES 251
SECT 267 SELF-ESTEEM 271 SOUL 273 STATES, GOVERNMENTS 294 SUPERSTITION 297
TEARS 299 THEIST 301 TOLERANCE 302 TRUTH 305 TYRANNY 308
DECLARATION OF ADMIRERS, QUESTIONERS AND DOUBTERS 315
A senior magistrate of a French town had the misfortune to have a wife who was debauched by a priest before her marriage, and who since covered herself with disgrace by public scandals: he was so moderate as to leave her without noise. This man, about forty years old, vigorous and of agreeable appearance, needs a woman; he is too scrupulous to seek to seduce another man's wife, he fears intercourse with a public woman or with a widow who would serve him as concubine. In this disquieting and sad state, he addresses to his Church a plea of which the following is a précis:
My wife is criminal, and it is I who am punished. Another woman is necessary as a comfort to my life, to my virtue even; and the sect of which I am a member refuses her to me; it forbids me to marry an honest girl. The civil laws of to-day, unfortunately founded on canon law, deprive me of the rights of humanity. The Church reduces me to seeking either the pleasures it reproves, or the shameful compensations it condemns; it tries to force me to be criminal.
I cast my eyes over all the peoples of the earth; there is not a single one except the Roman Catholic people among whom divorce and a new marriage are not natural rights.
What upheaval of the rule has therefore made among the Catholics a virtue of undergoing adultery, and a duty of lacking a wife when one has been infamously outraged by one's own?
Why is a bond that has rotted indissoluble in spite of the great law adopted by the code, _quidquid ligatur dissolubile est_? I am allowed a separation _a mensa et thoro_, and I am not allowed divorce. The law can deprive me of my wife, and it leaves me a name called "sacrament"! What a contradiction! what slavery! and under what laws did we receive birth!