The Turkish woman has, however, many rights and privileges under the law to console her. She is treated on all hands with a certain chivalric tenderness. No man would dare to raise a hand against her in public. Not a soldier, even in the midst of the general license and disorder of a riot, would attempt to maltreat even the most insolent woman of the people. The husband observes toward his wife a sort of formal deference, and the mother is always the object of especial veneration. Nor would a man dream of making his wife work in order that she might support him. It is the husband who settles the dot upon his wife; she is expected to bring him nothing but her wedding outfit and some female slaves. In cases of repudiation or divorce he is obliged to provide for her maintenance, and this is also the case when he treats her badly and she demands a separation in consequence. The facility of divorce remedies, to some small extent, the unfortunate consequences of marriages made almost always in the dark on account of the peculiar conditions of Turkish society, which oblige the two sexes to live entirely apart. It requires very little to enable a woman to obtain a divorce: it is only necessary to show that her husband has ill-treated her once, or spoken of her in conversation with others in offensive terms, or neglected her for a certain length of time. When she has a complaint to make, she has only to lay her grievance before the court in writing, or she may, if she choose, present it in person before a vizier--the grand vizier himself, if she wishes to--he being almost always ready to receive and listen to her kindly and patiently. If she cannot get on with his other wives, she may require her husband to provide her with a separate establishment, to which, indeed, she has a right in any case, or at least to separate apartments. The husband is forbidden to take either as wife or odalisque any slave whom his wife has brought from her father’s house. A woman who has been betrayed and abandoned can require the man to marry her unless he already has four wives: in that case she can oblige him to support her in his house and recognize her children. There are no illegitimate children in Turkey. Bachelors and old maids are very rare, and forced marriages far less common than one would suppose, as the guilty fathers are liable to punishment under the law. The state pensions all widows without relatives or means, and also provides support for orphans; often female children who have been abandoned are taken from the street by women of wealth, who educate and marry them off, and it is unusual for women to be reduced to absolute want. Now, all of this is not only true, but very admirable, but at the same time one cannot refrain from laughing outright when the Turks solemnly compare the social privileges enjoyed by their women with those of European countries, to the advantage of the former, or try to persuade us that they are blessed with an