e. But feudalism had evasions
which the Church could not always prevent. Sovereign though she were over
villeins and vassals and suzerains as well, yet the high lords, sovereign
too, married when and whom they liked, children if it suited them and
there was a fief to be obtained.

They married the more frequently in that marriage was easily annulled.
Even the primitive Church permitted divorce. "Fabiola," said a saint,
"divorced her husband because he was vicious and married again."[40] In
the later Church matrimony was prohibited within the seventh degree of
consanguinity in which the nominal relationship of godfather and godmother
counted equally with ties of blood and created artificial sets of
brothers, sisters, cousins and remoter relatives, all of whom stood within
the prohibited degrees. Relationship of some kind it was therefore
possible to discover and also to invent, or, that failing, there was yet
another way. A condition precedent to matrimony was the consent, actual or
assumed, of the contracting parties. But as in the upper classes it was
customary to betroth children still in the cradle, absence of consent
could readily be alleged. As a consequence any husband that wished to be
off with the old wife in order to be on with the new, might, failing
relationship on his part, advance absence of consent on hers, the result
being that the chivalric injunction to honor all women for the love of
one, continued to be observed since one was so easily multiplied.[41]

Thereafter began the subsidence of the order which at the time represented
what heroism had in the past, with the difference, however, that chivalry
lifted sentiment to heights which antiquity never attained. The heights
were perhaps themselves too high. On them was the exaltation of whatever
is lofty--honor, courage, courtesy and love. It was the exaltation of love
that made Don Quixote station himself in the high road and prevent the
merchants from passing until they acknowledged that in all the universe
there was no one so beautiful as the peerless Dulcinea del Toboso. But it
was the exaltation of humor that made him answer a natural inquiry of the
merchants in regard to the lady by exclaiming: "Had I shown her to you
what wonder would it be to acknowledge so notorious a truth? The
importance of the thing lies in compelling you to believe it, confess it,
swear it, and maintain it without seeing her at all."

Exaltation lifted to a pitch so high coul