luxury, and there was regarded as a
chattel; no virtues were demanded of her but obedience and beauty.
By exalting the soul above the body, the modern family in Europe--a
daughter of Christ--invented indissoluble marriage, and made it a
sacrament.'

"'Ah! the Church saw the difficulties,' exclaimed M. de Grandville.

"'This institution has given rise to a new world,' the Count went on
with a smile. 'But the practices of that world will never be that of
a climate where women are marriageable at seven years of age, and more
than old at five-and-twenty. The Catholic Church overlooked the needs of
half the globe.--So let us discuss Europe only.

"'Is woman our superior or our inferior? That is the real question so
far as we are concerned. If woman is our inferior, by placing her on so
high a level as the Church does, fearful punishments for adultery were
needful. And formerly that was what was done. The cloister or death sums
up early legislation. But since then practice has modified the law, as
is always the case. The throne served as a hotbed for adultery, and the
increase of this inviting crime marks the decline of the dogmas of the
Catholic Church. In these days, in cases where the Church now exacts no
more than sincere repentance from the erring wife, society is satisfied
with a brand-mark instead of an execution. The law still condemns
the guilty, but it no longer terrifies them. In short, there are two
standards of morals: that of the world, and that of the Code. Where the
Code is weak, as I admit with our dear Abbe, the world is audacious and
satirical. There are so few judges who would not gladly have committed
the fault against which they hurl the rather stolid thunders of their
"Inasmuch." The world, which gives the lie to the law alike in its
rejoicings, in its habits, and in its pleasures, is severer than the
Code and the Church; the world punishes a blunder after encouraging
hypocrisy. The whole economy of the law on marriage seems to me to
require reconstruction from the bottom to the top. The French law would
be perfect perhaps if it excluded daughters from inheriting.'

"'We three among us know the question very thoroughly,' said the Comte
de Grandville with a laugh. 'I have a wife I cannot live with. Serizy
has a wife who will not live with him. As for you, Octave, yours
ran away from you. So we three represent every case of the conjugal
conscience, and, no doubt, if ever divorce is brought in again, w