Custom authorises the deceived husband to sacrifice his wife, and if he rarely does it he is only hindered by the loss of the capital she represents; but usage requires the repudiation,[689] and the husband must, besides, take a striking and bloody vengeance on the lover.[690] At the very least he must simulate it, must fire, perhaps, on the guilty one with a gun loaded only with powder, and strike or slightly wound his wife’s lover. He has thus saved his honour; he is content with little, as in our rose-water duels.[691] With the Kabyles, more than elsewhere, marriage is a mercenary affair; consequently adultery naturally has pecuniary consequences. Thus, in compensation for adultery or the abduction of his wife, the husband has a right to the amount of the purchase, the _thâmanth_, or to an indemnity, sometimes arbitrary, sometimes tariffed;[692] but this compensation in money is distinct from the retaliation, and in no way hinders it.[693] Lastly, the Kabyle legislation formally interdicts the marriage of the adulterous woman with her accomplice.[694] Beginning with Melanesia and reaching Kabyle, I have sought among very different races, forming altogether the major part of mankind, the penalties used or decreed against adulterers. The result is a lamentable enumeration of sanguinary follies. I have passed by in silence the legendary or exceptional sufferings. I have not spoken of women crushed under the feet of elephants, violated by stallions, buried alive, etc. The common reality alone more than suffices to show that man, still far from being very delicate in conjugal or amorous matters, considers adultery as a great crime, especially for woman. It remains for us to see how the races calling themselves _par excellence_ noble--the Indo-European races--have regarded this fault, so difficult to pardon. IX. _Adultery in Persia and India._ The Avesta does not mention adultery in ancient Persia. In modern Persia it has been punished with ferocity, except, naturally, when it was committed by the Shah, who chose, according to his fancy, any young girls or women among his subjects, without any one daring to find fault with him.[695] But for private individuals adultery was an abominable crime; the man who had committed it was put to death; the woman, treated of course more severely, was tied up alive in a sack and thrown into the water.