nvulsed at her feet a stricken man, who twists,
and foams, and shrieks, in the hideous convulsions of one of the most
fearful infirmities with which a man can be incurably smitten! This is
not all: his child, poor little innocent angel! is also withered from
her birth. These sad and painful avowals excited bitter reflections in
Rodolph's mind. "Such," said he, "is the law of the land. A young,
handsome, and pure girl, the confiding and gentle victim of a shameful
dissimulation, unites her destiny to that of a man tainted with an
incurable malady,--a fatal inheritance which he will assuredly transmit
to his children. The unhappy wife discovers this horrid mystery. What
can she do? Nothing,--nothing but suffer and weep; nothing but endeavour
to overcome her disgust and fright; nothing but pass her days in
anguish, in indefinable and endless terror; nothing but seek, perhaps,
culpable consolation without the desolate existence which has been
created around her. Again," said Rodolph, "these strange laws sometimes
produce horrible unions: fearful for humanity. In these laws, animals
always appear superior to man in the care bestowed upon them; in the
improvements that are studied for them; in the protection which
encircles, the guarantees which attend them. Buy an animal, and, if an
infirmity decried by the law is detected after the purchase, the sale is
null and void. Indeed, what a shame, what a case of public injury would
it be to compel a man to keep an animal which has a cough, is lame, or
has lost an eye! Why, it would be scandalous, criminal, unheard-of
infamy! Only imagine being compelled to keep, and keep for ever, a mule
with a cough, a horse that was blind, or an ass that was lame! What
frightful consequences might not such injustice entail on the community!
Therefore, no such bargains hold good, no words bind, no contract is
valid: the omnipotent law unlooses all that was thus bound. But if it
relates to a creature made after God's own image, if it respects a young
girl who, in the full and innocent reliance on the good faith of a man,
unites her lot with his, and wakes up in the company of an epileptic, an
unhappy wretch stricken with a fearful malady, whose moral and physical
consequences are immeasurably distressing, a malady which may throw
disorder and aversion into a family, perpetuate a horrible disease,
vitiate whole generations, yes, this law, so inexorable when lame,
blind, or coughing animals are the con