Under the feudal system in Europe this right of prelibation, or marquette (designated in old French by the expressive term _droit de culage_), has been in use in many fiefs, and until a very recent epoch. Almost in our own days certain lords of the Netherlands, of Prussia, and of Germany, still claimed it. In a French title-deed of 1507 we read that the Count d’Eu has the right of prelibation in the said place when any one marries.[93] More than this, ecclesiastics, and even bishops, have been known to claim this right in their quality of feudal lords. “I have seen,” says Boetius, “in the court at Bourges, before the metropolitan, an appeal by a certain parish priest, who pretended to claim the first night of young brides, according to the received usage. The demand was rejected with indignation, the custom unanimously proscribed, and the scandalous priest condemned to pay a fine.” “In a kingdom of Malabar,” says J. Forbes, “the ecclesiastical power took precedence of the civil on this particular point, and the sovereign himself passed under the yoke. Like the other women, the queen had to submit to the right of prelibation exercised by the high priest, who had a right to the first three nights, and who was paid fifty pieces of gold besides for his trouble.”[94] In Cambodia, according to an ancient Chinese traveller, religious prelibation was obligatory on all the young girls, and was performed every year with great ceremony. The parents who had daughters to marry made a declaration of it, and a public functionary fixed the day for the celebration of _Tchin-than_, or the legal and religious defloration. For this the intervention of a Buddhist priest, or a _tao-sse_ priest, was indispensable. The parents entreated his service, which was very costly, and for this reason girls who were poor retained their virginity longer than the rich. It even sometimes happened that pious persons, moved by a sentiment of charity, took on themselves the payment of the costs of the ceremony for those who had been waiting a long time. Great display attended it. On the appointed day the officiating priest was carried in the evening with much pomp to the festive house, and the next morning he was reconducted home in a palanquin with parasol, drum, and music, and not without being offered fresh presents. A. de Rémusat has given, in Latin, some curious particulars of the intimate details of the ceremony, which I cannot relate here.[95] These few examples suffice to show how very much morality is a relative thing, but they cannot serve as a basis to a general theory of hetaïrism.