Paris Before the Deluge by Hippolyte Mettais

Author:Hippolyte Mettais
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2015-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

III. A Law of Marriage

If the Pah-ri-ziz Atlanteans were not always satisfied with all the laws of their country, which they turned upside-down from time to time with revolutions, only to recover them subsequently under other names, as is always the way, there were certain fundamental laws that they conserved with a religious respect.

They came in a direct line from the Buddha Sylax, Me-nu-tche and Lutetius, a divine trinity that they never separated, either in their invocations or the beneficent attributions that they derived from them.

The foremost of these laws was the one pertaining to marriage.

Now, that law permitted a young woman to marry at the age of fourteen; it ordered her to do so at twenty, on penalty of going into a convent and remaining cloistered there for five years. She was liberated again after that time, but always under the injunction of marriage, unless a panel of experts dispensed her of the obligation for reasons of health.

A young man was not permitted to exceed the age of twenty-two without entering into the bonds of matrimony without exposing himself to five years of expatriation. When that time was past, he could return, but only to obey the law.

Among the Pah-ri-ziz, the initiative of marriage was not, as among modern peoples, the sole privilege of young men. The first request was also accepted, on the part of both families, without any distinction.

A second article of the law specified that any young man who was in default of legal mores, if he were found to be guilty, would be expelled forever from the territory of Atlantis, unless he married within three months.

The young woman whose fault was recognized would be exposed in a small canoe, pushed out to sea with no oars and no sail—in sum, no means of steering—abandoned to the grace of God and the waves, forbidden ever to return to Atlantis if she survived, except to marry within a time designated by the law.

That entire law was severe, but it found a corrective in another article of the matrimonial code, which prescribed that spouses had to remarry every five years if they wanted to continue to live together. If they wanted to separate, they were free after that space of time—but separation was a stigma from which one did not recover easily.

Now, in the year two thousand three hundred and twenty-eight, there was in Lutecia a man of high intelligence, who had achieved wealth and honors by virtue of his own knowledge, firm determination and merit. He was the head of the militia. His name was Arimaspes.

Like all Atlanteans, Arimaspes had satisfied the prescriptions of the law with regard to marriage. Not long thereafter, however, he had lost his wife. He had then made the resolution to remain alone henceforth with his only child, his daughter Ludia. The love of his daughter and the memory of his wife were sufficient for him; he did not remarry, the law giving him that right.

Arimaspes had numerous friends, some who liked the man and doubtless others who only liked his credit.

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