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