he apostles were married, Joseph was married, and
I want to be. If I, Alsacian, am dependent on a priest who dwells at
Rome, if this priest has the barbarous power to rob me of a wife, let
him make a eunuch of me for the singing of _Misereres_ in his chapel.

NOTE FOR WOMEN

Equity demands that, having recorded this note in favour of husbands, we
should also put before the public the case in favour of wives, presented
to the junta of Portugal by a Countess of Arcira. This is the substance
of it:

The Gospel has forbidden adultery for my husband just as for me; he will
be damned as I shall, nothing is better established. When he committed
twenty infidelities, when he gave my necklace to one of my rivals, and
my ear-rings to another, I did not ask the judges to have him shaved, to
shut him up among monks and to give me his property. And I, for having
imitated him once, for having done with the most handsome young man in
Lisbon what he did every day with impunity with the most idiotic
strumpets of the court and the town, have to answer at the bar before
licentiates each of whom would be at my feet if we were alone together
in my closet; have to endure at the court the usher cutting off my hair
which is the most beautiful in the world; and being shut up among nuns
who have no common sense, deprived of my dowry and my marriage
covenants, with all my property given to my coxcomb of a husband to help
him seduce other women and to commit fresh adulteries.

I ask if it is just, and if it is not evident that the laws were made by
cuckolds?

In answer to my plea I am told that I should be happy not to be stoned
at the city gate by the canons, the priests of the parish and the whole
populace. This was the practice among the first nation of the earth, the
chosen nation, the cherished nation, the only one which was right when
all the others were wrong.

To these barbarities I reply that when the poor adulteress was presented
by her accusers to the Master of the old and new law, He did not have
her stoned; that on the contrary He reproached them with their
injustice, that he laughed at them by writing on the ground with his
finger, that he quoted the old Hebraic proverb--"He that is without sin
among you, let him first cast a stone at her"; that then they all
retired, the oldest fleeing first, because the older they were the more
adulteries had they committed.

The doctors of canon law answer me that this history of the adul