The lot of the
sister, however, was pitiful in the extreme (unless it happened that the
older brother was kind and considerate), for if she were in the way she
could be bundled off to a cloister, there to spend her days in solitude,
or she could be married against her will, being given as the price of
some alliance.

The conditions of marriage, however, were somewhat complicated, as it
was always necessary to secure the consent of three persons before a
girl of the higher class could go to the altar in nuptial array. These
three persons were her father or her guardian, her lord and the king. It
was Hugo who likened the feudal system to a continually ascending
pyramid with the king at the very summit, and that interminable chain of
interdependence is well illustrated in the present case. Suppose the
father, brother, or other guardian had decided upon a suitable husband
for the daughter of the house, it was necessary that he should first
gain the consent of that feudal lord to whom he gave allegiance, and
when this had been obtained, the king himself must give his royal
sanction to the match. Nor was this all, for a feudal law said that any
lord can compel any woman among his dependants to marry a man of his own
choosing after she has reached the age of twelve. Furthermore, there was
in existence a most cruel, barbarous, and repulsive practice which gave
any feudal lord a right to the first enjoyment of the person of the
bride of one of his vassals. As Legouve has so aptly expressed it: _Les
jeunes gens payaient de leur corps en allant a la guerre, les jeunes
filles en allant a l'autel._

Divorce was a very simple matter at this time so far as the husband was
concerned, for he it was who could repudiate his wife, disown her, and
send her from his door for almost any reason, real or false. In earlier
times, at the epoch when the liberty of the citizen was the pride of
Rome, marriage almost languished there on account of the misuse of
divorce, and both men and women were allowed to profit by the laxity of
the laws on this subject. Seneca said, in one instance: "That Roman
woman counts her years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number
of her husbands." Juvenal reports a Roman freedman as saying to his
wife: "Leave the house at once and forever! You blow your nose too
frequently. I desire a wife with a dry nose." When Christianity
appeared, then, the marriage tie was held in slight consideration, and
it was only a