The wedding ceremony itself is most simple. There is no going to the registry office or to church. The whole function consists of a procession, when the bride and bridegroom are conducted by their respective relations to a dais; there they are put face to face, and see each other for the first time, look at each other, bow, and the knot is tied indissolubly. The mutual surprise sometimes must be rather unexpected. But, whether agreeable or not, it is considered very bad taste to show any emotion. Without exchanging a single word, a few minutes afterwards the young bride is conducted to her home, where she is cloistered for ever. Social etiquette demands that the bridegroom shall return to the company of his young bachelor friends for a few days, which are passed in festivities, if not orgies. A honeymoon is unknown, and wedding trips have never been instituted. The young wife becomes more or less a head servant to her mother-in-law, and no visible change is introduced into the husband's daily routine. If married life begins in such extraordinary conditions, it remains equally ill-balanced all through life. The husband has everything, the wife nothing; she has not even a name. And yet, though legally a nonentity, socially, if clever, she can attain to a certain position. Unseen, unknown, and nameless, in a hidden corner of the women's quarter, she can receive her lady friends, get all the news of the outer world, and send messages by her slaves. There have been cases when women had even decisive political influences, and, like spiders, ambushed in corners, spread their nets. VIII