In former days, the independent-minded, those who feared not public opinion, or thought little of social conventions, went each their way, to live in a different dwelling--as happens still in certain countries (in Spain, for instance, where divorce does not exist; where legal separation is not even recognised); but though they might live apart, the marriage contract held none the less, and the question of fortune remained a grave problem for solution. It is the same to-day when, through worldly expediency, or weakness, an ill-assorted couple share a miserable life or seek solace in separation. The woman, married under the Napoleonic Code, cannot dispose of her dowry, and the man, on his side, cannot sell without his wife’s signature. The _société d’acquêts_ (common property of married people) is a constant menace in a situation of this kind; one comes to think that it is of no use for a couple to economise for the sake of their heirs, for, when one of the two parties dies, the common property goes to the other. Another case, also serious, may occur. If either husband or wife incurs debts, these, under the law, become common to both, and it comes about that the one who has not run into debt finds him or herself compelled to meet the liabilities of the other! What manifold complications, what openings for dissension, what accumulated vexations! Widowhood, widowerhood, seems the only deliverance from a desperate situation. But there is something worse still. In a household completely at variance, weary with strife, the children have to look on at scenes which wound their belief in the love between husband and wife. In such a case they suffer through the absence of divorce, both from the moral standpoint and because they are deprived of property which should fall to them, since through the _société d’acquêts_--that stern claimant--the children’s capital cannot be increased. If we pass from this array of facts to another, which concerns this unnatural life of two people, the evil is no less great. From the time when life together has become impossible, the husband more or less openly substitutes illicit union for marriage, and most frequently takes to live with him the woman he has chosen as his new companion. Because the marriage contract remains unbroken, this is an insult to the wife, for his house is still her home by law. Although in a case of separation, the wife almost always acts with greater circumspection and caution, she will find it difficult to prevent the echo of any attention she may accept from reaching the ears of her husband, or his knowledge that she gives willingly to another what she has yielded with such aversion to himself. Divorce prevents this gratuitous insult to marriage. The advantages it offers exceed by far the disadvantages cited by the defenders of an institution which to-day has grown weak because it has remained unchanged in the midst of social evolution.