so much the more reason for them to make a regulation in this
matter, because they are the only people of those parts that neither
allow of polygamy nor of divorces, except in the case of adultery or
insufferable perverseness, for in these cases the Senate dissolves the
marriage and grants the injured person leave to marry again; but the
guilty are made infamous and are never allowed the privilege of a second
marriage. None are suffered to put away their wives against their wills,
from any great calamity that may have fallen on their persons, for they
look on it as the height of cruelty and treachery to abandon either of
the married persons when they need most the tender care of their consort,
and that chiefly in the case of old age, which, as it carries many
diseases along with it, so it is a disease of itself. But it frequently
falls out that when a married couple do not well agree, they, by mutual
consent, separate, and find out other persons with whom they hope they
may live more happily; yet this is not done without obtaining leave of
the Senate, which never admits of a divorce but upon a strict inquiry
made, both by the senators and their wives, into the grounds upon which
it is desired, and even when they are satisfied concerning the reasons of
it they go on but slowly, for they imagine that too great easiness in
granting leave for new marriages would very much shake the kindness of
married people. They punish severely those that defile the marriage bed;
if both parties are married they are divorced, and the injured persons
may marry one another, or whom they please, but the adulterer and the
adulteress are condemned to slavery, yet if either of the injured persons
cannot shake off the love of the married person they may live with them
still in that state, but they must follow them to that labour to which
the slaves are condemned, and sometimes the repentance of the condemned,
together with the unshaken kindness of the innocent and injured person,
has prevailed so far with the Prince that he has taken off the sentence;
but those that relapse after they are once pardoned are punished with
death.

"Their law does not determine the punishment for other crimes, but that
is left to the Senate, to temper it according to the circumstances of the
fact. Husbands have power to correct their wives and parents to chastise
their children, unless the fault is so great that a public punishment is
thought necessary for strik