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The "Judgment of Solomon" and "The Adulteress before Christ," the only two "set" pieces he ever attempted, eloquently show how he fell short when struggling athwart his genius. For to register a fact was utterly foreign to his nature; he records an impression, frankly surrendering his spirit to the sense of joy and beauty.
Thus the children of an adulteress may be like her husband, though begotten by another man, which is caused through the force of imagination that the woman has of her own husband at the act of coition. And I have heard of a woman, who, at the time of conception, beholding the picture of a blackamoor, conceived and brought forth an Ethiopian.
The language of Pascal and of Corneille became the medium of corrupting the minds of millions. The events of the day were some actress who had discovered a new way to outrage decency, or some new play which deified a prostitute or an adulteress. Paris became the world's fair, to which flocked the vain, the idle, and the debauched from all corners of the globe.
Clair! I could not forbear exclaiming 'ye shall both be caught in a net of your own making, when ye least expect it! My lady will be turned out of doors as an adulteress; and my gentleman will perhaps be shot through the head by the husband he has wronged! Patience, patience, good Simpson; thou shalt yet riot in the very satiety of thy vengeance.
And because this is its origin there is not love between an adulterer and an adulteress except such as the love of hatred is, which is such that they can be in conjunction in externals but not in internals.
But suddenly the desire to look seized him. At the same instant she said: 'This is inhuman. I may die.... 'Yes, I will go to her, but like the Saint who laid one hand on the adulteress and thrust his other into the brazier. But there is no brazier here. He looked round. The lamp! He put his finger over the flame and frowned, preparing himself to suffer.
For, before the time of the said Canutus, the adulterer forfeited all his goods to the king and his body to be at his pleasure; and the adulteress was to lose her eyes or nose, or both if the case were more than common: whereby it appears of what estimation marriage was amongst them, since the breakers of that holy estate were so grievously rewarded.
Perhaps also he unconsciously recognizes the sentiment ascribed to Mohammed, "Laysa bi-zanyatin ilia bi zani," "there is no adulteress without an adulterer," meaning that the husband has set the example. Polygamy is, of course, the order of the day; it is a necessity to the men, and even the women disdain to marry a "one-wifer."
But she was sorely grieved to see the effect such a fear had upon Adone. "I was afraid it was a woman," she thought; "but this thing, could it be true, would be worse than any harlot or adulteress. If they took away the river the land would perish. It lives by the river." "The river is our own as far as we touch it," she said aloud to her son; "but it was the earth's before it was ours.
Another extends his indifference to good morals even to his future wife, or he sinks to such depths of infamy as to be indifferent to his wife's conduct; but go a step further; speak to him of his mother; is he willing to be treated as the child of an adulteress and the son of a woman of bad character, is he ready to assume the name of a family, to steal the patrimony of the true heir, in a word will he bear being treated as a bastard?
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