Part 29 (1/2)
”Because it is barbarous. You would be sent to gaol.”
”But she was my wife.”
”Nevertheless it would not be tolerated. The law steps in and protects women from ill-usage.”
”How shameful! Not allowed to do what you like with your own wife!”
”Most a.s.suredly not. Then you remarked that this was how you dealt with one of your wives. How many did you possess?”
”Off and on, seventeen.”
”_Now_, no man is suffered to have more than one.”
”What--one at a time?”
”Yes,” I replied.
”Ah, well. Then if you had an old and ugly wife, or one who was a scold, you could kill her and get another, young and pretty.”
”That would not be allowed.”
”Not even if she were a scold?”
”No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end.”
”Humph!” H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently he said: ”There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill one another.”
”No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off--here in France--unless extenuating circ.u.mstances were found. With us in England he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead.”
”Then--what is your sport?”
”We hunt the fox.”
”The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting is business with us--or was so--not sport.”
”Nevertheless with us it is our great sport.”
”Business is business and sport is sport,” he said. ”Now, we hunted as business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport.”
”We are not suffered to kill one another.”
”But take the case,” said he, ”that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?”
”By no means. Now, to change the topic,” I went on, ”you are totally dest.i.tute of clothing. You do not even wear the traditional garment of fig leaves.”
”What avail fig leaves? There is no warmth in them.”
”Perhaps not--but out of delicacy.”